X-Wing: Hidden Dragon
by Agamar Rules The Galaxy
Summary: The sequel to X-Wing: Rogues' Gallery. Though the Maw Irregular Fleet lies in ruins, tensions remain high as skirmishes break out across Alliance and Imperial space. Bolstered by new blood, the Rogues and their allies are pulled into yet another galactic crisis as they race to prevent all-out war.
1. Dramatis Personae

**Dramatis Personae**

**108th Tactical Fighter Wing 'Rogue'**

Rogue Leader: Wing Commander Syal Antilles, Human female from Corellia

Rogue Two: Flight Officer Orn Kasan, Human male from Coruscant

Rogue Three: Lieutenant Altan Sansar, Human male from Garig

Rogue Four: Flight Officer Rakash Charr, Gand male from Gand

Rogue Five: Lieutenant Commander Jost Vigil, Human male from Corellia

Rogue Six: Flight Officer IG-90, assassin droid from Holowan Laboratories

Rogue Seven: Flight Officer Nodra, Duros male from Duro

Rogue Eight: Flight Officer Rosharra, Wookiee female from Kashyyyk

Rogue Nine: Flight Officer Leda Maros, Mirialan female from Mirial

Rogue Ten: Flight Officer Bulsara, Human male from [REDACTED]

Rogue Eleven: Lieutenant Jon Windspeaker, Human male from Tatooine

Rogue Twelve: Flight Officer Kaz Beiner, Human male from Sluis Van

Renegade Leader: Commander Sara Konnair, Human female from Coruscant

Bandit Leader: Commander Abel Grimm, Human male from Dantooine

**Wraith Squadron**

Voort 'Piggy' Sa'Binring, Gamorrean male from Gamorr

Turman Durra, Clawdite male

Myri Antilles, Human female from Corellia

Trey Courser, Human male

Jesmin Tainer, Human female

Wran Narcassan, Human male

Huhunna, Wookiee female from Kashyyyk

Drikall Bessarah, Devaronian male from Devaron

Viull 'Scut' Gorsat, Yuuzhan Vong male

Sharr Latt, Human male from Coruscant

Thaymes Fodrick, Human male

**New Jedi Order**

Grand Master Luke Skywalker, Human male from Tatooine

Jedi Master Kyle Katarn, Human male from Sulon

Jedi Master Corran Horn, Human male from Corellia

Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, Human male from Coruscant

Jedi Knight Keyan Farlander, Human male from Agamar

**Galactic Federation of Free Alliances**

General Wedge Antilles, Human male from Corellia

General Tycho Celchu, Human male from Alderaan

Major Wes Janson, Human male from Taanab

Major Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian, Human male from Ralltiir

Lieutenant Kettch, Ewok male from Endor

**Galactic Empire**

Emperor Jagged Fel, Human male from Nirauan

Empress Jaina Solo, Human female from Coruscant

Knight-Commander Avers Danvik, Human male from Bastion


	2. Danger Zone

1

Danger Zone

'Voodoo, Voodoo, this is Oracle. We're seeing unknown sensor sigs on our screens, say twelve starfighters. Confirm?'

'Confirmed, Oracle. Unknowns confirmed. No visuals yet, but they're there. Please advise.'

'Sit tight, Voodoo. Scratch observational flight pattern and assume combat situation. We have craft on the launch deck getting ready to intercept.'

'Roger that, Oracle. Hope your interceptors get here fast. Voodoo out.'

The Jedi Academy's launch deck was abuzz with activity as techs scrambled to clear it for launch. Two X-wings taxied off the elevator, taking positions and awaiting clearance for a flight. Their paint jobs were instantly recognizable to anyone with even fleeting knowledge of the galaxy's pilots. One bore a stylized infinity emblem and dark blue wing tips, the symbol of a man so lethal that Alliance Starfighter Command analysts had simply given up on counting kills. The other was almost entirely stock Incom white, save for the starboard foils, painted Rogue red. Their pilots were the best of the best.

'Red Team, you are cleared for launch.'

In sync, the two X-wings accelerated, first on repulsorlifts then on regular engines as they cleared the hangar doors. They flew low and fast over the mountains of Ossus in close formation, moving to intercept the mass of unidentified objects that had recently breached the Academy's sensor net.

'This is Oracle. Glad to see you two managed to get up. Red One, Red Two, maintain present course.'

The two fighters banked and climbed, heading for the next marker on their intercept path, throttles at full and s-foils in attack position.

'This is Red One, roger that.'

Luke Skywalker flicked the master arm switch to the 'on' position as he approached the estimated intercept point.

'Wedge, are your weapons active?'

The infinity X-wing pulled up alongside Luke. Wedge Antilles was no Jedi, but his lack of Force-sensitivity just made his status as the galaxy's Ace of Aces that much more impressive.

'Guns are hot,' Wedge replied, 'holding fire unless we get the go-ahead. Or until your new guests start shooting.'

'Good. And hey, it beats disciplining cocky rookie pilots, right?'

'From a certain point of view.'

Luke snorted. 'Alright, buddy, let's climb a little bit higher. They're here.'

* * *

In the void above Folor Base, Wing Commander Syal Antilles found herself in much the same situation. Large numbers of hostiles, unknown type, coming in at high speed.

'Give me a break, Central, I'm babysitting nuggets up here.'

'We know, Rogue Leader, but your group is the only one up and able to intercept.'

Syal sighed. Some of her pilots had seen combat experience but for the most part, Rogue Wing's graduating class consisted of kids. Rookies, fresh from Alliance Starfighter Weapons School. They were still combat virgins in trainer X-wings. They still hadn't received that shipment of XJ-7s, so the only fighters flying with actual weapons belonged to the veteran Rogues and Commanders Grimm and Konnair, who flew XJ-7s fresh from reserve.

'Alright, we'll do what we can, Central. How do you want us to handle this?'

'Be polite, Rogue Leader, but consider any attempts to mark your fighters on targeting computers as hostile intent.'

'Wilco, Central.'

Syal switched channels, flicking the weapon safeties off and switching to lasers. 'Alright, people, listen up. Renegade and Bandit Squadrons, return to base and stay out of the fight. Rogues Two through Four, go with them. The rest of you, on me. We'll go high and make the intercept.'

Commanders Konnair and Grimm acknowledged the orders and led their fighters back to Folor Base. They were both combat veterans. They knew the score. Konnair had lost most of her old team, Polearm Squadron, to a hypervelocity burst round during the final stages of the Maw Campaign. She wasn't eager to put her new pilots' lives on the line just yet. Grimm was still new to his rank. He trusted Syal's more experienced judgment here.

'Rogue Three to Lead. That leaves you without wingmen.'

'I can handle myself, Three,' Syal said. 'Those trainer X-wings won't be much use unless you plan on tickling them to death.'

Back at Folor Base, the scanner software flashed the message: 'Something's out there.' On the central hololith's tactical display, the Rogue Squadron icons approached the unknown formation. They were vastly outnumbered and almost certainly outgunned.

Just another day at the office.

* * *

Jagged Fel straightened out his formal tunic, making a few last-minute checks to his attire.

'You look fine, sir,' offered his companion.

Jag certainly didn't feel like he did. These damned meetings. How he hated the dress code for these things.

'The more you fuss, the worse it'll look,' the second continued.

With a sigh, Jag gave up. 'Dammit. You're right. Sorry, I get nervous when it comes to these things. Can't give the Moffs a centimeter. They see one slight mistake with your tuck and collar and suddenly they think you've gone weak.'

'I understand, sir,' said Knight-Commander Avers Danvik, 'but if you keep this up, you'll be late and they'll think even worse of you.'

'Point.'

The two of them stepped out of their arrival hangar and walked down the corridors of the Moffship. Danvik was the first of his kind, commander of the newly formed Imperial Knights. Jag wasn't yet used to the idea of being surrounded by a lightsaber-toting praetorian guard. Many of the first generation had been formed from Force-sensitive Imperial citizens and Chiss immigrants, hand-picked based on their skills and loyalty to the Empire. The Knights' instructors and leaders had been formed from the few Imperial-born Jedi to return home following Jaina's coronation as Empress. Jaina herself had assisted in training and organizing the first generation, which grew to fill the niche left by the defunct Royal Guard. The Knights had inherited many things from their predecessors-the predominantly red color scheme, the Royal Guard TIE Interceptors, the counter-espionage and multidisciplinary training regimen, and great dental.

Unlike the Jedi, the Knights swore allegiance first and foremost to the Empire and her people. Where the Jedi were meant to serve as neutral peacekeepers, the Imperial Knights were the Emperor's sword, shield, and eyes. And it was their first official day on the job. Danvik was no doubt as nervous as Jag. The Imperial Knights were all anxious to ensure that this Mofference would go down without a hitch.

It was hard to keep a straight face with terms like 'Mofference' and 'Moffship' being thrown around, but Jag had the best sabacc face this side of the galaxy and he did so enjoy messing with the normally uptight and ambitious Moffs. It got to the point that 'Moff' barely even registered as an actual word anymore.

Jag and Danvik met the second member of the Imperial Knight bodyguard detachment.

'Right on time, sir,' the Knight said, saluting. 'They're ready for the most part. Moff Savik hasn't arrived yet, though. Said he was delayed by a minor emergency on his flagship.'

Jag returned the salute and grinned. The best part was always the entrance. They'd have to get started with one member short, then. He hit the door release button and strode in, head held high. Confidence, he told himself. Let none of these predators see weakness!

'I BID YOU ALL DARK GREETINGS, BROTHERS!' Jag exclaimed, raising a fist according to tradition.

'DARK GREETINGS, EMPEROR!' Some of the Moffs maintained their composure. Others went through varying degrees of cringe.

'I hereby declare this Mofference in session! Now, gentlemen, I trust you all know why we are here.'

'A traitor in the ranks

'Correct. We all saw what sort of hardware and resources the Maw Irregular Fleet possessed. Shipyards, advanced TIE variants, an _Executor-_class Super Star Destroyer, even a Missile Boat. No warlord, even a former Alliance head of state, would have access to such things without friends in high places.'

One of the Moffs shifted uneasily in his seat. 'And you believe this traitor is Imperial?'

'I _know_ the traitor is Imperial,' Jag said. 'The Alliance doesn't have a single operational TIE Hunter or Missile Boat in its inventory. Daala's hypervelocity guns? An Imperial design. And let's not forget the fact that the forces who defected to the Maw were former Imperial personnel.'

'The battle is over, Your Highness,' said another Moff. 'We haven't seen hide or hair of any dissidents and the Empire itself has been at peace since Daala's trial. Perhaps Daala's ally died along with the rest of the defectors.'

'Don't be obtuse,' Jag said coldly. 'Grand Admiral Pellaeon's reports were perfectly clear. The highest-ranking officer among the defectors was a Star Destroyer captain. A line captain. Now what sort of Star Destroyer captain has access to the Empire's coffers, let alone the clearance to obtain TIE Hunters and Spectres on his own?'

For once, the Council of Moffs had no pithy remarks or thinly-veiled insults. The silence was only broken when a worried-looking ensign ran into the room.

'Apologies for the interruption, my lords,' he said, 'but there's been an incident groundside. Pharos Defense Station's been attacked. They're overrun.'

Jag frowned and got to his feet. 'Do we have any holo feeds? Contact with ground forces?'

The ensign shook his head. 'Not as far as I know, sir. The feed's gone silent.'

Danvik tensed. 'That means we've lost one of our surface-to-orbit emplacements. Ensign, are we within Pharos' zone of fire?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Tell the captain to get this ship moving.' Danvik turned to his Emperor. 'Sir, we need to get you to safety.'

'Not until the others are-'

The Moffship rocked from a heavy impact. From outside, Danvik heard panicked yells and running crewmen, as well as the sounds of fire extinguishers.

'What was that?' Danvik asked.

'Pharos' surface-to-orbit gun,' Jag said. 'Probably a near-miss. We only have a few minutes before it reloads and reacquires us.'

Danvik turned to the second Knight in the room. 'Lead the Moffs to the shuttle in port hangar two. I'll go with the Emperor.'

'Aye, sir,' the Knight said.

'Alright,' Jag said. 'Lead the way, Knight-Commander.'

* * *

'TIEs?' Beiner asked. 'What the hell are TIEs doing all the way out here?'

'Maybe they got lost,' Windspeaker offered.

'Attention, TIE squadrons,' Syal announced on open channels, 'you've breached Galactic Alliance airspace. Decrease speed and power down any weapons you possess, and we'll escort you to a nearby landing point. Bank to your starboard if you comply.'

Nothing. Moments later, Spark beeped in alarm as he registered a spike on sensors. The enemy's targeting computers were active.

'Boss, they're painting us on their scopes,' Vigil said. 'What's the plan?'

Syal sighed. 'Figures. Rogues, you are weapons free. Shoot anything that isn't us.'

'Just the usual, then,' Leda remarked.

The Rogues switched to torps and picked targets. As the two formations closed in, the Rogues loosed a volley of torps at the enemy Interceptors. Then came the lasers, and then the dance of death began again.

* * *

Wedge and Luke broke and rolled as the intruders opened up on them.

'Cease fire, cease fire!' Wedge ordered. 'Alliance fighter squadron, this is General Wedge Antilles. That's blue on blue fire.'

The enemy starfighters didn't acknowledge. They were X-wings, sporting insignia that neither Wedge nor Luke had seen before. The enemy units' emblem was that of an ouroboros encircling a planet, with the number 111 written on the snake's flank. Who were these guys?

'It's no good, Wedge. They're jamming our comms.'

'Well, I guess we'll have to negotiate a little more aggressively.'

Wedge broke hard to port then swept back starboard, leading an enemy X-wing before double-tapping the craft. Then he climbed and rolled in behind the tail of another fighter, sniping the X-wing with a cockpit shot. It went down quietly, plummeting towards Ossus' surface.

'Squad, fall back,' said one of the enemy pilots. 'Omega signal.'

Wedge and Luke didn't pursue. Their X-wings didn't have enough fuel to pursue, and they had no idea what sort of allied forces waited for the unknown X-wings. The wide open skies above the Academy were criss-crossed by engine and torpedo contrails and the air smelled of smoke and burnt metal. Their job done, the two starfighters turned and flew homeward. The battle had passed in a blur. It had been, what, five minutes? In that time, Luke and Wedge had downed four of the hostile X-wings and come out without a scratch.

'Wedge, did you see the unit markings?'

'Yeah,' Wedge said, frowning. '111th Tactical Fighter Wing. I don't remember there being a 111th in Alliance Starfighter Command, let alone with that emblem.'

'Neither do I,' Luke replied. 'Never a moment's rest, is there?'

'If only,' Wedge said wearily. He was getting a little tired of his off-duty time getting interrupted by galactic crises, explosions, and gunfire. How he missed the days when his biggest problem was making sure Syal, Myri, and Wes matured into responsible adults. 'I guess it's back to work for us.'

* * *

From the Moffship's portside hangars, a quartet of Royal Guard Interceptors launched, followed by a diplomatic shuttle. Jag settled into the seat of his TIE, evening out power feeds as Danvik formed up on his wing. Under normal circumstances, the shuttle was empty, a decoy to draw attention away while the actual VIP craft danced circles around would-be assassins. Now, however, it carried the most important people in the Empire. They escaped just in the nick of time as a hypervelocity round split the Moffship in two. The old cruiser suffered badly in its death throes, wracked by secondary explosions and venting atmo as it became a lifeless husk in the void above Bastion.

To starboard, Moff Savik's flagship, _Justice for All_, was hit by another blast as Jag and Danvik flew towards the surface. The surface-to-orbit cannon had decapitated the Star Destroyer, punching into the bridge and leaving the control tower an empty, burnt husk.

'Shit,' Danvik muttered. 'Poor bastard.'

The rest of the ships around Bastion maneuvered to clear out of Pharos Station's danger zone. With all of the orbital traffic going on, the retreat quickly became mired down in the mass panic of smaller civilian ships. The two Interceptors traveled a different flight path, diving straight for the safety of the Imperial Palace's defense network.

'Hierophant, Hierophant, this is Bishop. Respond, over.'

'Bishop, Hierophant. Receiving.'

'Pharos Defense Station just went hostile. Activate defenses and be ready to see two friendly royal squints on sensors.'

'Roger that, Bishop. What's the status on Flanker?'

'Flanker's alive and well. He's in the second squint. What about Fencer?'

'We're moving Fencer to a secure position now, Bishop. She's not happy about all the fussing.'

'Fencer can complain all she likes as long as she's alive. Keep her safe. ETA is five minutes. Bishop out.'

Callsigns. Another seemingly ludicrous necessity in the career of a head of state. Jag's security callsign, designated by Imperial Intelligence, was Flanker. Bland, boring, and utterly forgettable. Perfect for its intended use. Fencer was Jaina, who was no doubt sitting cozy behind layer after layer of security. The attack's timing was too convenient. Someone had just attempted to annihilate the Empire's highest-ranking officials, and it was almost certain that someone with the resources to hit an Imperial anti-orbital laser would have enough to send assassins into the palace. Despite the danger, Jag knew that Jaina would be more than capable of taking on any spy or assassin, especially when backed up by a legion of the Empire's greatest warriors. Right now, he had to keep his eyes out for-

'Incoming missiles! Break! Break!'

From shadowed back alleys, two missile teams bracketed the TIEs and fired. Even as he spoofed the first missiles with flares, Jag saw another missile team getting ready to launch. He yawed to starboard and loosed a snap-shot, vaping the two hostiles. Then another missile lock rang in his cockpit. And another. And another. A near-miss popped his shields and pelted his Interceptor with shrapnel. Instrument readouts blacked out and the engines sputtered and died.

'Dammit, I'm hit,' he said.

'Bail out, Flanker. I'm coming around to draw their fire.'

'Negative, negative, the eject handle's stuck. I'm going to have to crash-land this thing.'

Jag fought to keep his Interceptor aloft, aiming for a nearby park. His maneuvering equipment was shot to hell and the doomed Interceptor seemed to want to roll to port no matter how hard he tried to keep the control yoke stable. Even without his HUD, he knew he was coming in too fast.

'Ah, crap,' he muttered.

Then the world went black.


	3. Ouroboros

2

Ouroboros

Two figures met on a distant, forlorn world, sitting in a bunker deep beneath the earth. One wore a gray X-wing flight suit bereft of all rank or unit insignia save for a single ouroboros on his right shoulder. The other wore an Alliance officer's uniform, similarly devoid of decoration, his features obscured by the shadows of the bunker's poorly lit interior.

'You retreated?'

'Yes, sir. Our mission was scrubbed the moment the enemy intercepted us.'

'Two X-wings, Colonel. _Two_.'

'X-wings piloted by Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, sir.'

'Them? They weren't supposed to be on-site.' The officer sighed. 'Not your fault, Colonel. Nobody expected you to go up against them. I'll have a word with our contacts about the faulty intel. I can only hope this setback won't throw a wrench into the rest of our plans. Tell your men to get some rest. Their next mission won't be for a few more days, I expect.'

'Will do, sir.'

The pilot rose, saluted, and departed, leaving the officer alone in the darkness. Damn the awful lighting. He made a mental note to include a request for more light fixtures and a better power plant in his next report.

* * *

The pilot's lounge was nearly empty when Ben Skywalker passed it on the way to his bunk.

'O hai, Ben,' Syal greeted from a distant table. She and Commander Vigil were busy poring over a mess of datapads and papers with two other pilots.

'Hey, hey, Syal,' Ben replied wearily. It had been a long trip from Ossus. 'Hey, you know where bunk A-12 is?'

'Oh. Um, you take that hallway over there. The A bunks should be the first branch on the right.'

'Thanks,' Ben said, yawning. 'I need to catch some shut-eye.'

'Yep.'

As Ben walked off, Syal's casual facade broke. She nearly broke into giggles right then and there.

'What?' Konnair asked.

'Oh, you'll see.'

A few moments later, there was a muffled thump followed by someone yelling, 'Goddammit!'

Strangely, the person yelling it wasn't Ben. Syal blinked in surprise and excused herself from the table to peek around the corner. Apparently, the customary Wraith Squadron greeting had failed. Ben stood to the side of his bunk door with his finger on the open button. Lieutenant Kettch had apparently missed his mark. Myri looked quite displeased.

'Urgh, _Beeeeeen!_ You're _supposed_ to stand in _front_ of the door!' Myri pouted.

'One of these days, you're actually going to set off someone with facehugger PTSD,' Ben grumbled. 'Then we'll see how Lieutenant Kettch fares without stuffing.'

As he stepped into his room, he failed to notice the tripwire rigged right behind the door. A second Lieutenant Kettch dropped on him from the ceiling.

'Goddammit.'

Drop ewoks. Not even once.

Myri and Syal high-fived. Nobody ever expected the second Ewok. 'Yub yub, Benny,' they chorused before returning to their previous locations.

Ben rolled his eyes, shut the door, and chuckled. Frakking Ewoks.

* * *

Pain. Pain was good, right? It meant you were alive. Pain was all he felt right now. The ringing in his ears dulled the other sounds around him. When he opened his eyes, his vision was a blurry mess. He vaguely made out the laser bolts streaking back and forth above his head. Someone was dragging him.

He blinked. Slowly, his vision cleared. Danvik loomed over him, dragging his wounded arse out of the line of fire. The Knight-Commander had his pistol drawn, firing away at the attackers swarming the crashed Interceptor. One dropped, shot through the throat. Danvik double-tapped another, then kneecapped a third.

'Bishop to all units!' Danvik yelled on his comm. 'Bishop to all units! Requesting support! Flanker is down but alive! Multiple hostiles converging on Flanker's position!'

'Bishop, this is Hierophant,' responded one of the other Knight detachments. 'We have air support and casevac en route, but it'll take some time. There's SAM teams popping up for kilometers around you.'

'Dammit. Do what you can, Hierophant. Casualties are a secondary concern. Bishop out.'

More of the attackers charged Danvik-far too many to put down with just a blaster. He dropped the gun and drew his lightsaber. With a snap-hiss, the lightsaber blade ignited, a bright length of silver-white fire. Unlike the lightsabers of the Jedi Order, the Knights' sabers were based on a standardized design, using mass-produced parts and synth crystals. They were not the personalized works of art that the Jedi wielded, but they were lightsabers all the same.

Danvik channeled the Force through his body, boosting his awareness and reflexes as he settled into a Shien stance. His lightsaber and thoughts became one, intercepting every single laser bolt that came close to the Emperor. As the enemy fired, he deflected laser bolts back into their ranks, downing three more assassins before they gave up on blasters entirely. The assailants fixed bayonets or drew knives and charged.

To counter the new threat, Danvik switched his game up, focusing now on Djem So techniques and sensibilities. The form's lack of mobility was no concern here-the enemy came to him. His job was to be the Emperor's shield and hold his ground. He opened the melee up with a Falling Avalanche strike, bisecting both an upraised rifle and the man behind it. As the other attackers charged with bayonets, he stepped forward, transitioning into a Raptor's Descent, cutting each one down with a single strike. Danvik was untouchable. The foes who engaged him in melee ended up in varying states of dismemberment, while those who tried to use their blasters ended up receiving their own shots. It was only a matter of time before they got desperate.

'In His name!' yelled one of the assassins. As Danvik locked blades with a particularly brutish warrior, another enemy armed the grenades on his belt and charged. 'My life for the Master!'

Momentarily distracted and exhausted from prolonged combat, Danvik didn't see the headbutt coming. He dropped to his knees, keeping the brute's blade at bay, but he couldn't do anything about the suicide bomber without taking a hand off his saber.

Just as the fanatic reached the halfway point, however, he fell, shot in the knee and groin. Another burst of blaster fire put him down for good.

With a final burst of Force-enhanced strength, Danvik pushed the last enemy back and decapitated him in one fluid motion. The Knight-Commander turned to see Jag holding the blaster pistol he'd discarded earlier.

'Was aiming for his head,' the wounded Emperor said groggily.

Just then, a flight of gunships zoomed overhead, followed by a Lambda shuttle. The long-requested reinforcements had arrived a bit too late.

'It's about damn time,' Danvik muttered.

He holstered his weapons and helped the medics lift Jag onto a stretcher. He shook his head. First day on the job and it had been a complete disaster. Someone's head was going to roll for this.

* * *

Once more aboard the _Tiger Claw_, Wedge and Luke were back on the job. They made their way to the bridge, where Captain Tomar was likely already in the process of prepping the fleet for departure. After the Maw Campaign, FleetCom, in its infinite wisdom, had seen fit to reduce Wedge's fleet and reallocate many of its heavier ships to other battle groups. Before they opened the doors, however, they stopped to talk.

'The 111th,' Luke said. 'Did your searches turn up anything? I couldn't get anything from the Alliance's holonet archives. I still haven't gotten my clearance restored.'

Wedge shook his head. 'Nothing on my end, either, even with my codes. We might find out more if we were at StarCom HQ, but we're a bit too far for that.'

'Yeah,' Luke said. He sighed. 'And that news with the Rogues and the attack on Bastion. Something's fishy about this whole business.'

'Yep. I've got some people on Coruscant right now to work on our case.'

'Good. I'll call up the Academy later today, see if we can task a couple of Jedi to Bastion to help sort things out there, too.'

'Sounds like a plan. For now, we'll just have to do our jobs until something new comes up.'

'Yep. The guys you sent to Coruscant-are they trustworthy?'

'As trustworthy as can be outside of Face Loran's guys. I tried calling Intelligence, but Face was away on a job. I called up the next best thing.'

'What about the Wraiths?'

'We'll need them here for our own intel and counter-espionage work. I've got another team on it.'

Wait. Another team? Since when did Wedge have more than one team of spies at his command?

* * *

Meanwhile, on Coruscant, three gentlemen sat in a safehouse, set up by the old Wraiths long ago. These men were _not_ Wraiths. They also most definitely were not spies. One read aloud from a datapad in hushed tones while the other two huddled around.

'"Your job today will be to visit the Alliance Military Archives here on Coruscant to investigate the whereabouts and history of the 111th Tactical Fighter Wing. Remain discreet and reveal no more than absolutely necessary to get the job done. You have each been supplied with datapads that have been fitted with reinforced frames, remote self-destruction, and biometric sensors keyed to your own DNA. Do try to keep them intact, as they are on loan from Alliance Intelligence. Best of luck, Wedge."'

Tycho Celchu frowned. 'So it's a library run?'

Shrugging, Wes Janson pocketed his datapad. 'How hard could it be?'

Hobbie Klivian buried his face in his palms. 'DON'T SAY THAT!' he exclaimed.

* * *

'Gotcha. Don't worry, Luke. I'll have a couple of Jedi look into it.'

'Thanks, Kyle. Keep me updated. Skywalker out.'

Kyle Katarn's holocomm deactivated. He pulled up the Temple's duty roster and ran down the list. Most of the Order were already out on Jedi business, out of reach of Bastion. Some were on vacation, making the most of their yearly free time. Calling them in was out of the question-even Jedi needed breaks. Who else was-Oh. There we go.

Kyle put in a call on his comm unit. 'Farlander, get in here.'

A few minutes later, Keyan Farlander came in, already dressed for a flight. He seemed eager. _Too _eager. 'Got a mission, Chief?'

Kyle sighed. Farlander was a dedicated Knight and Alliance soldier, dividing his time between his military career and Jedi duties. There was no mistaking that he wanted to fight the god fight. The problem was that he was a B-wing jock. A _fanatical _B-wing jock. So far, he held the Jedi Order record for the number of missions that exceeded the collateral damage budget. Farlander was also accidentally responsible for bombing Toprawa back to the stone age. Twice. After the New Republic had successfully restored the planet.

'Yes, Keyan, a mission.'

'_I'm ready!_ Just give me the word and I'll liberate the _everloving shit_ out of any evildoer in my path!'

Kyle rolled his eyes. 'Just try to remember that your munitions are _precision_-guided this time. Alright, so we need someone to run an investigation on Bastion and everyone with even a gram of subtlety is occupied. That leaves you.'

'Booyah!'

'Before you go off blowing up bad guys and starting bar brawls, though, I'm going to need to make sure you don't exceed our annual collateral damage budget again. So I'm assigning you a partner.'

Farlander's exuberance died faster than Alderaan. He looked aghast, even disgusted. 'A _partner_? Chief, I work alone!'

'You're a loose cannon, Farlander,' Kyle said. 'One more explosive screw-up and I'll have no choice but to take you off the Force.'

Groaning, Farlander admitted defeat. 'Alright, who is it? Some stuffy by-the-book stick in the mud? A droid who wants to know the meaning of love? An Ewok?'

Kyle raised an eyebrow and smirked. Then he activated his comm unit again. 'Master Horn, get in here.'

The man who came in wore sunglasses, a shoulder holster, and a tie on top of his neatly tucked collared tunic. His sleeves were rolled up just enough to imply that he'd been hard at work, and the CorSec and Jedi insignia on his breast made it clear that he was an officer of the law. Corran Horn smelled faintly of doughnuts, one-liners, and classy film noir jazz.

'You called, Chief?' Horn asked, his voice smooth and calm.

Kyle nodded. 'Horn, we've got a mission to Bastion that needs doing. Meet your partner. Farlander, Horn. Horn, Farlander. It's an investigation job, so play nice and cooperate with the locals. The details have already been uploaded to your personal datapads.'

'Roger that, Chief. We're on the case.'

Farlander and Horn departed Kyle's office and made their way to the Academy hangar, where their personal starfighters waited. It was time to blow this scene, get Whistler and their stuff together.

'Okay,' said Farlander. 'Three, two, one, let's jam.'


	4. We Didn't Start The Fire

3

We Didn't Start the Fire

The Alliance Military Archives were a dull place. They smelled of old people and dust, their halls rarely traveled by anyone save the custodial droids and the few meatbags employed there. For the receptionist on duty, it came as a complete surprise when three war heroes came walking in.

'Um, hello,' she greeted, giving Wes, Hobbie, and Tycho a wave. 'Can I help you?'

Wes smoothed out his hair and motioned for Hobbie and Tycho to let him handle this. The other two rolled their eyes.

'Why _hello there_,' Wes said, pausing briefly to look at the receptionist's nametag. 'Maya, is it? Now, Maya, my friends and I are working on a book on the Galactic Civil War. Would you be so kind as to point us to the Starfighter Command databanks?'

'O-oh, um, of course!' Maya said, shocked that Wes had apparently known her name. 'The Starfighter Command records should be on the second level of the west wing. The elevators are through that hallway. Good luck on your book!'

Wes flashed her a trademark grin and a wink. 'Many thanks, sweetheart.'

He shook her hand and led Hobbie and Tycho to the elevators. When they left, Mara looked down at her hand. Huh. Major Janson had given her some sort of card. She flipped it over. Oh sweet Space God. His comm number. She blushed profusely. A comm number? What was she-what could a hero like him see in-oh man. Oh lawd. She swooned. There was definite swooning.

* * *

'Smooth.' Hobbie's voice was thick with sarcasm.

'Hey, nothing wrong with getting on people's good sides,' Wes protested.

'I saw you slip her your comm number, Janson,' Tycho said. 'Yeah, not as suave as you think, mate.'

'Pfft. You two are merely jealous of my romantic prowess. I have dozens of sexual conquests. _Baker's_ dozens.'

Hobbie snorted. 'Sure, Wes. Sure. And I bet some of them weren't even Gungans, Ewoks, or livestock. Come on. It's this way.'

The three of them ascended to the second floor, spreading out, each one activating a data terminal. They scrolled through lists and menus, searching through the Alliance's files for the information Wedge had asked them to dig up.

'Anything?' Wes asked on the comm.

'Nada,' said Hobbie.

'Nope,' Tycho added.

Nothing turned up on the list of active starfighter units. Wes frowned. 'I'm going to try looking at deactivated unit designations. Hobbie, try looking through planetary defense units. Tycho, search through sector ranger groups.'

Wes fiddled with his search criteria, running through lists of decommissioned and disbanded Rebel, New Republic, and Galactic Alliance squadrons. Nothing, nothing, nothing, noth-hold on.

'Guys, I think I've got something. Not much, but it might be a lead.'

* * *

Farlander and Horn landed at one of Bastion's minor spaceports. Spaceport Alpha, the primary artery through which civilian and visitor traffic passed, had been bombed and was currently still off-limits. When they flew by the planet's capital city, it looked less like the seat of Imperial power and more like a recently-secured warzone. Stormtrooper and Imperial Army patrols traveled the streets while gunships and Imperial Knight starfighters flew air cover.

Corran winced at the damage done to the Empire's capital world. 'What the hell happened here?'

'Not me this time,' Farlander said quickly.

The pair's starfighters pulled into a far hangar and set down. The spaceport was set up on the outskirts of the capital city with civilian shuttles that traveled to and from nearby hotels. As they passed through customs, the two Jedi presented their permits and paperwork. It all went smoothly until one of the guards stopped Farlander.

'I'm sorry, sir, but you're only allowed to hold on to your lightsaber and blaster sidearm.'

Corran raised an eyebrow at his partner. Farlander grumbled and removed a frag grenade from his person. The guard tapped the table next to them. He wasn't having any of this bullshit. The B-wing jock handed over a full belt of grenades, a belt of demo charges, a blaster carbine, a cut-down scattergun, and a thermal detonator. Then he put his luggage on the table and removed a blaster rifle with an underslung grenade launcher, several more demo charges, an Adumari blastsword, and various rifle grenades.

'Sorry, Master Jedi. Security reasons. You can keep the blastsword, though.'

Farlander rolled his eyes.

'Told you,' Corran muttered. 'Come on, let's go find our contact.'

This contact happened to be Knight-Commander Danvik himself. Standing at one of the spaceport doors in plainclothes, the Imperial Knight greeted them with a respectful nod.

'Farlander, Horn,' he said, 'I trust you encountered no trouble on the way here?'

'None at all,' Corran replied. 'Thanks for greasing the wheels for us.'

'Least I could do for old coworkers. Come on. I've got a ride arranged for us already.'

The three stepped through an unmarked service door into a parking lot for spaceport employees. An Imperial gunship waited for them with a pair of fully armored Knights manning its guns.

'This place looks like it could take on a tank assault,' Corran remarked. 'We heard Bastion was attacked, but none of the holonet reports said how hard.'

'We've been working to keep the news networks quiet,' the Knight-Commander said as they boarded the gunship. 'It was bad. Militants assaulted our surface-to-orbit defense station at Pharos and did a number on the system defense fleet before they were all put down. They had SAMs and snipers set up throughout the Hollows district, too. We lost a lot of people.'

'My condolences,' Farlander added.

'Thanks. Tell Luke we appreciate the help, by the way. A lot of my Knights are still green-they don't know how to handle investigations as well as the Jedi do. Word of advice, though? Lose the Jedi insignia, keep the sabers concealed.'

Corran frowned. 'What did the Jedi do?'

'Nothing, as far as we know,' Danvik said. 'The troops are angry, though. We found Alliance unit patches and ID tags on some of the corpses. Some of the guns we found were Alliance military standard issue, too.'

That surprised the Jedi. Alliance gear and troops? All the way here in Bastion? That didn't make sense. A force large and strong enough to put the Imperial capital in a state of emergency couldn't possibly have gotten here without detection.

'I know, it's fishy,' Danvik said. 'Personally, I think the Alliance are innocent. This was a false flag operation, plain and simple. We don't have enough evidence to convince the Moffs, though, and that's what worries me. A lot of hardliners want blood for blood, and with Pellaeon busy in the Salban Gulf, we don't have anyone in-system who can rein the Moffs in.'

'What about the Emperor and Empress?'

'Emperor Fel is injured. Fighter crash. We have him stabilized and in bacta, but it'll be a while before he's active again. The Empress is under lockdown. She's doing what she can, but the Moffs won't listen to her. They say she's got too much Alliance in her, too much Jedi.'

Farlander let out a low whistle. 'Damn.'

'Yeah,' Danvik agreed. 'Damn.'

* * *

'A dead squadron,' Tycho said.

Hobbie nodded. 'Looks like.'

The 111th Fighter Wing was the name of a Rebellion-era X-wing outfit. Commissioned shortly after the Battle of Yavin, the 111th had a long and storied history of disciplinary problems, poor morale, and numerous violations of Rebel Alliance rules of engagement. They'd also been involved in numerous covert operations whose nature remained classified even with the clearance cards Wedge had provided them. The names of the unit's commander and pilots had also been expunged from Alliance records. The only images relating to the 111th were a few blurry shots of stark gray X-wings with an ouroboros on the wingtips. Records state that they had been killed to a man at the Battle of Endor.

'Hold on,' Tycho said in hushed tones, 'do either of you remember a 111th Fighter Wing? Or any X-wings with their paint job?'

'Nope,' the other two chorused.

'Strange,' Tycho muttered. 'Let's pack all this up and-'

'Company,' Wes whispered. Someone tapped Tycho on the shoulder.

He rose and turned to address the tapper, an unremarkable man in a military police uniform. Three other MPs stood behind him. Tycho glanced at the man's shoulder and saw no unit patch. Huh.

Tycho kept his tone even. 'Can I help you, officer?'

'General Celchu, I'm going to need you and your two colleagues to come with me.'

'For what purpose?' Hobbie asked.

'You're under arrest,' the officer said.

'On what grounds?' Hobbie pressed.

The officer addressed Tycho instead. 'General, you can come quietly or my men can subdue you by force. Are you coming with us or not?'

Shrugging, Tycho sighed in defeat. 'No respect for old-timers these days, I tell you. I remember back during the liberation of Kulman's Landing when we got showered with flowers and crap. All the ladies wanted our control sticks. Hobbie, Wes, remember that?'

'Yeah,' Wes replied, keeping it natural. The Battle of Kulman's Landing had been a particularly bloody conflict during the Galactic Civil War. Faced with overwhelming odds, the Rogues had only survived through clever use of flanking and diversionary tactics.

'We're your wing, Tych,' Hobbie muttered.

Tycho tossed his stylus into the air. For a brief instant, the MPs' eyes were focused on the stylus as it rose. Tycho used that moment of distraction to headbutt the lead MP and put him into a hold. Wes and Hobbie darted to the sides, taking cover behind the data stacks as Tycho used the MP as a shield. He grabbed the man's pistol, flicked the fire selector to stun, and blasted one of the other troopers in the face. Wes and Hobbie jumped and incapacitated the other two while they took aim at Tycho. Then Tycho stunned his shield.

'Alright, someone will have heard the gunshots,' Tycho said. 'Plans?'

'Take your guy, leave through a back door,' Wes suggested.

'Drop him and run before the real MPs get here,' Hobbie said.

'We'll go with Wes' plan,' Tycho decided. 'This guy might know something. Lead the way, I'll follow whenever the coast is clear.'

* * *

When Syal, Ben, and Myri walked into the pilot's lounge, they found Vigil, Bulsara, Nodra, Sansar, and Kasan lying face down on the floor.

'Hey, boss,' Vigil said.

'I don't even want to know,' Syal said, going for the coffee machine.

'If you lie with your dick on the floor when the ship goes into hyperspace, it feels fuckin' great!' Nodra said.

Syal recoiled in horror. '_I said I didn't want to know, goddammit!_ And stop teaching Ben things! He's young and impressionable and doesn't need any of your perversions.'

Kasan scoffed. 'Perversions? This is tame shit, Commander. If you want perversions, go find some of Sansar's magazines.'

'What's wrong with those?' Sansar asked incredulously. 'They're just starfighter mags!'

'Dude, you have centerfolds of _Uglies!_ Far as I know, you are the only man on this ship who yanks the stick to Y-TIEs and Z-Defenders.'

'At least I do it to starfighters and not freighters,' Sansar countered. 'Fat chicks? Seriously?'

Syal clamped her hands on Ben's ears and pushed him out of the lounge. 'Okay, ew, ew, _ew, ew, ew_, we are _leaving_ this horrid den of deviancy and iniquity.'

'I don't get it,' Ben said, 'what's wrong with ships and starfighters?'

'Nothing wrong with them,' Syal said, removing her hands as they entered the Rogues' hangar. 'But Uglies? Freighters? Yeesh. No, Benny, you stay normal and stick with _real_ starfighters.'

'Well, duh, obviously, but why do you treat them like people?'

'Because they _are_ people,' Myri said emphatically. 'I mean, seriously, when you look at your X-wing, what do you see?'

'Um. An X-wing?'

'And that is where you fail,' Syal said. 'Can't fly properly unless you treat your fighter like the beautiful bringer of divine justice she is. See your X-wing? It's not just a fighter. Look at that fuselage, the lasers, the sumptuous payload, that luscious thrust-vectored aft. Proportions in all the right places, sleek, predatory, with all the class of the Incom name and all the simplicity, familiarity, and fun of the Skyhopper's control board. She's not just an X-wing. She's that cute, tomboyish girl-next-hangar, all cleaned up and ready for the furball. She'll grow up with you, keep you safe, and stick with you through Death Stars, Vong invasions, and any interstellar flight you care to name. The Y-wing cries when the TIEs bully her, the A-wing sits in the hangar all day and runs when she's taken a bruise, and the B-wing sits on her throne eating expensive snacks. But the X-wing won't do any of that. Do you remember love, my friend? Because the X-wing does, and she loves you. Unless she's a T-65D because those are made of explosives.'

Ben raised an eyebrow skeptically. 'When was the last time you got laid, dude?'

'Took my X-wing out for a flight six hours ago,' Syal declared proudly.

'No, I mean _actually_ laid.'

'I don't understand the question.'

Ben facepalmed. 'Myri, you get what I'm talking about, right?'

'Yeah.'

'Oh thank space g-'

'I miss my X-wing. I hope mom's taking care of it back home.'

'Aaaaand you lost it,' Ben said. 'Seriously, am I the only one who wants to connect tab A to slot B with a real, flesh-and-blood person?'

'Yep,' Syal said. 'You've got an odd fetish there, Benny.'

'Hey, I won't judge,' Myri added quickly. 'If you have a meatbag fetish, go right on ahead. I'll even be your wingman, hook you up with _all_ the ladies at the cantina, help you score a night of _bow-chicka-bow-wow_.'

'No,' Ben sighed. 'No thanks. I'll pass.'

'You sure, bruh? I'll back you up. Let's go philandering. C'mon.'

'Nope, nope, nope,' Ben said. He put on a winning smile. 'Besides, I think I can handle myself. There isn't a girl in this galaxy who doesn't want to get with a Skywalker, especially yours truly. Also because I don't want you setting off a bomb in the cantina by accident.'

'Fun-burglar,' Myri muttered. 'Explosions are the most fun part of a night on the town.'

Ben groaned. 'You two are hopeless.'

'Yub yub, little brother,' Syal sing-songed.


	5. Who Are You

4

Who Are You

When Farlander and Horn reached the Imperial Palace's medical center, they saw a number of the mysterious militants' corpses set up on operating tables. Coroners and medical droids got to work examining the bodies while Imperial Intelligence agents took their stripped-off equipment for analysis. A pair of orderlies passed the trio, carting off a number of body bags set for disposal. Many of them bore the emblem of the Empire, which marked them for a military burial. Overall, it seemed very clean, clinical, and orderly-a far cry from the more brutal days of Palpatine's reign.

'We've been working around the clock to study the bodies we managed to round up,' Danvik explained, 'but so far, they've proven frustratingly inclusive.'

'How so?' Farlander asked.

'Equipment appears to be Alliance military standard, as I said before, but they don't have any unit insignia. Their gear may not even necessarily indicate Alliance employment, since their blasters and kit have been seen on numerous private military contractors' inventories. Our embassy on Coruscant reported that they haven't been able to dig up anything, either. Forensic analysis so far indicates that most of the attackers were Bastion citizens-regular people leading regular lives. No consistent political leanings, no histories of major criminal activity, nothing. We did find some odd markings on most of the bodies, though.'

Farlander traded a look with his partner. 'What kind of markings?' Farlander asked.

Danvik led the pair to a couple of bodies set aside for disposal and drew attention to their upper bodies. 'Different sorts of markings, but there was a pretty common theme. Ritual scarring, tattoos, branding. The guys who attacked Pharos bore an intricate wheel design. Very fancy stuff. Everyone else had an empty circle. The tattoos of that were all done in a single smooth brushstroke. Might be an enso design, but it's hard to tell with simple stuff like this.'

Surely enough, one body bore an intricate golden wheel design tattooed on his chest. The second had the maybe-enso painted on the nape of his neck. Both circular, both rife with symbolism. Interesting. They'd have to look into this some more once they got settled in.

'Well, well, well,' Corran said. I guess you could say this-'

He paused to whip out and don a pair of sunglasses.

'-is a whole new brand of terrorism.'

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

* * *

The captive had proven to be a dead end. A literal dead end, in fact. Interrogation had gone nowhere, even after getting stunned in the balls and told the story of Wes' Gungan incident. Though they'd defused a bomb strapped to the man's chest and removed a false tooth with a poison pill, the three of them hadn't accounted for neural kill devices. So there they were, sitting in a safehouse with a datapad full of files and a corpse with smoke wafting from his eyes, ears, and mouth. Frying his own brain had been preferable to caving to interrogation.

'Strip the corpse,' Tycho said at last.

'What?' Hobbie said.

'We're going to check the body for anything else useful. Bodily markings, personal effects, etcetera.'

The other two shrugged and hefted the dead MP onto a table. A search of his pockets revealed nothing but a pack of smokes from a common brand, an ordinary lighter, and a box of playing cards. No identity cards, service tags, or unit patches kept in pockets. Cutting open the cigarras and opening the card box revealed no secret codes, either. They found no markings on the guy's body, either. No tattoos or gang marks.

'Dammit,' Tycho muttered. 'Alright. Hobbie, dismantle and scrap the bomb. Wes, grab the quicklime. We'll get rid of the body.'

'Hold on,' Hobbie said. He pointed to a patch of skin on the dead body's neck. It looked like freshly healed skin or a synthskin patch job, conspicuously smooth and unblemished compared to the rest of a person's skin.

Wes fetched one of the lamps in the safehouse and shined it on the body. Sure enough, it looked like there was still a hint of black on the skin.

'They didn't do as thorough a job of removing the tattoo as they'd thought,' Hobbie muttered.

'Circular patch,' Wes observed. 'Bet you ten credits that the tattoo was an ouroboros.'

'No bet.'

Tycho sighed. 'Well, that's something at least. We won't get much more out of this guy. Let's get all this stuff cleaned up.'

Wes and Hobbie stood rigidly at attention and saluted with mock crispness. 'Yub yub, General,' they chorused as they went to work.

* * *

In the darkness of Bastion's slums, the agents of Bastion's impending fall met. A truck stopped in front of a dilapidated, condemned apartment bloc. The truck's occupants exited and pulled out a body bag and unzipped it, jabbing a stim needle into its occupant's neck. With a jolt, Moff Savik returned to life. He ached and his burns would need treatment but for now, he had a meeting to attend. He dearly wished that the Pharos strike force hadn't been so accurate with their hypervelocity fire. His faked death had almost become reality. The truck driver handed him a fresh uniform bearing the markings of a cardinal.

Savik entered the apartment complex, making his way to a rear room that had once been an office. A pair of black-clad guards swept the chamber for monitoring devices then stepped out, leaving their leader to face the Master. On the ceiling, a single hololith flickered to life, depicting a floating ball of light. The Master preferred not to broadcast his true physical form via long-range communications. Maintaining secrecy was their utmost concern. Better safe than sorry.

As the Master's form appeared, the commander kneeled. 'My Lord. I am honored by your presence.'

'Arise, brother-cardinal,' the Master said, his voice distorted artificially. 'The second phase of the Bastion operation is on the horizon.'

'What would you have me do, sire?'

'With the Emperor incapacitated, the Empire teeters on the brink of breakdown. The Moffs will bicker and squabble over the scraps and tear the Empire asunder with their infighting and belligerence. Your job now is to accelerate that. Drive a spike into the vulnerable heart of the Empire. Raise hell in the Imperial capital, my son. Spread the word of hatred to the downtrodden masses, fuel the fires of anger! Send your preachers to every corner of this fortress-city and sunder it from within! Moff Kelik's flagship, _Spirit of Purgation_, remains in anchor high above. His laxity in military matters has left his soldiers and ship crews fat and lazy. When the time is right, send a strike force to Bastion Spacedock. Disguise your men as dockworkers and troops of the Bastion planetary defense force, then infiltrate and destroy Kelik's precious Star Destroyer.'

'And what of the Moff, Lord?'

'I leave that to your discretion, cardinal. His death could drive the Moffs to greater feats of desperate ineptitude, but his survival could lead him to do something equally idiotic on his own.'

Savik nodded. 'It will be done, Master.'

'I know it will, my son. And do encourage your men to _accomplish_ all of their objectives this time.'

'Noted.'

The hololith darkened, leaving the cardinal alone once more. He left to gather his officers. They had much work to do and many failures to execute.

* * *

With a flicker of pseudo-motion, Rogue Squadron's One Flight dropped out of hyperspace. Forming up on Syal's starfighter, the X-wings arranged themselves into a finger-four spread.

'Rogues, check in.'

'Two here,' said Kasan, 'all systems optimal.'

'Three, ready for a fight.' That was Sansar, eager for his first taste of actual combat.

'Four, all green,' said Charr. Not really one for words, Syal supposed.

It was a typical patrol mission. Take the rookies out to stretch their space legs, take in some of the sights of the neutral Tarion Sector, then go home. Or so it should have been.

'We're being hailed,' Syal noted.

'New signatures on sensors coming in fast,' Kasan said. 'Looks like TIEs in combat formation.'

'Hostile?' Sansar asked.

'Hold your fire,' Syal cautioned. 'If they're Imperial, they're not targets.'

She switched from the encrypted squad band to the open channel the TIEs were using. 'Rogue Leader to TIEs, send traffic.'

'Rogue Leader, you have violated Imperial space,' declared the lead TIE. 'Turn back now or you will be fired upon.'

Imperial space? Every single starmap provided to the Rogues had listed this region of space as neutral. Were the Imperials getting aggressive again?

'Say again, TIE Avenger,' Syal replied. 'Did you say "Imperial Space"? Our charts say we've entered the coreward parts of the Tarion Sector. That's neutral territory.'

'It's no longer neutral, Rogue Leader. You've violated Imperial borders. Now turn back or face the consequences.'

Syal frowned. 'Our fleet hasn't received any news on territorial expansion. Permission to speak with your home ship or commanding officer.'

The TIEs were getting awfully close now. It was a flight of TIE Avengers arranged into a diamond formation. They were too far for Spark to identify their unit marks, however. The comms remained silent.

'I say again, Imperial pilot, requesting permission to speak to-'

Spark trilled in alarm as her instrument panel registered a sensor spike. They were being painted on targeting computers.

'Shit.' Syal switched back to the Rogue frequency. 'TIEs are hostile. I say again, TIEs are hostile. Weapons free.'

* * *

Farlander and Horn made their way through Bastion's Neon district. It was a small island of life and color in the oppressive order and grays of the fortress-city. The Neon was home to the Imperial City's duty-free stores, casinos, and classier prostitutes. Situated in the lower levels of the city's southwestern quadrant, the Neon never saw natural sunlight. It remained in a perpetual night illuminated by riotous, vibrant signage which flashed in tune to the synth-pop beats that seemed audible even from the most secluded nooks and crannies. Only rarely did Imperial personnel venture into this disorganized, chaotic morass. They preferred to maintain vigil from a series of security checkpoints set up at the district's entrances. The extra money that the foreigners brought in far outweighed the illegality of the acts that took place in the Neon's shadowed corners. That made the Neon a haven for off-worlders, adventurous nouveau riche, and Hollows residents looking for something a little less awful in life.

The B-wing jock raised a skeptical eyebrow at a Neimoidian food stand, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell. 'Remind me again why we're running around this end of town when we could be sitting nice and comfy in the palace's dining room.'

Swallowing a mouthful of take-out noodles, Corran replied, 'It's good to get out and see the sights. Familiarize yourself with your area of operation, look for potential hidey-holes, stake-out spots, and sniper roosts. Neither of us are very acquainted with Bastionite culture, either. Take everything in, learn to blend in, and our investigation goes a whole lot better. Besides, we might run into a lead around here.'

Strolling aimlessly through the Neon, the two watched the residents and expats go about their business. From an alley, an Ithorian sold porn holos, hash chunks, and homebrewed alcohol out of the back of his truck. A few meters down the road, a row of market stalls sold deep-fried millipedes, scorpions, seahorses, and silkworms, among other unusual delicacies. Strangely enough, Farlander found the scorpions fairly palatable. They tasted like buttery popcorn, which came as a welcome surprise.

'I wonder how much of the stuff going on here is legal,' Farlander muttered.

'Probably none of it,' Corran replied through a mouthful of his food. 'Not our jurisdiction, however.'

Before they could keep on with their wandering, Corran pulled Farlander to a stop.

'Hold up,' the Corellian said. 'You seeing what I'm seeing?'

He did. A man walked out of a nearby cantina and waved goodbye to someone inside. He seemed relatively unassuming and normal if not for the scar on the man's palm. It was a wheel criss-crossed by spokes, the tissue fresh and white.

Farlander's hand strayed to his blaster but Corran stopped him at the last second.

'Hold up. We might be able to follow him to a hideout.'

Farlander grumbled unhappily. 'Myeh myeh myeh, I'm Corran Horn, I'm a good cop and when I go home, I'm gonna drink a big glass of milk and not evade taxes, myeh myeh myeh.'

'You're _how_ old?'

'Too old for _this_ shit. HOOOOOOO!'

'HOOOOOOO!'

Classic cop joke.

'But seriously, though,' Corran said, 'we follow. Less effort than interrogating and less chance of him lying to us.'

'Fine. But we're blowing the place up when we're done.'

'We're not blowing up evidence.'

'So I can blow up stuff you _don't_ classify as evidence. Good enough for me.'

* * *

Back on Ossus, Kyle Katarn froze as he finished up another round of Jedi ping-pong. For some completely inexplicable reason, he sensed a disturbance in the Force, as if someone was planning to do something unimaginably stupid. He sighed, put his training saber aside, and went to get a drink. No, scratch that. Two drinks. One for him and one for the lawyer.


	6. Don't Bother None

5

Don't Bother None

It took a while, but Farlander and Horn managed to convince the scarred insurgent that they wanted in on his little detonite party. Thankfully, galactic media only really gave a shit about Skywalkers, Solos, and Fels, so the two Jedi remained relatively safe from recognition. They stood now in the back of the congregation as the insurgents went through some manner of religious ceremony. The leader preached in a mixture of Basic and a language neither Jedi recognized, guttural and grating to the ears. Bathed in dull red light and utterly sweltering in Bastion's current climate, the improvised chapel seemed almost hellish. This was getting weirder and weirder by the minute.

So far, the sermon seemed to be general calls for the downfall of the Imperial government and the rise of a democratic regime. The Empire was a shadow of its former self, he'd said. Its failure to maintain order across the galaxy demonstrated the need for a new galactic order. Power to the people, order this, law that, blah blah blah. Bullshit, of course. Most people who shouted 'Power to the people!' just wanted power for themselves.

Farlander gave Corran a look.

'Not yet,' Corran muttered. He had his holocomm set to record under his vest and he wanted to make sure it got everything out of this little cult gathering.

'In His name! By His word!' roared the preacher. 'In a fortnight, our Order will drive a spike into the heart of Bastion's shipyards! With faith and fire, the heathens of the dying Empire will be purged from orbit and we shall take one more step on the road to our ascension! And what luck! Tonight, we have new blood to temper upon the anvil of war! Come forth, aspirants!'

Oh. Crap.

The cultist Farlander and Horn followed in gave them both a nudge. 'Go on, then, boys. Don't be afraid.'

The rest of the men and women in the room looked at the two with eager eyes. They _cheered_. Well, can't fault them for a hostile work environment. Screw it. Just roll with it. They had plenty of evidence of guilt. Now they just needed to take someone alive. Corran wished he'd brought more handcuffs and zip ties. Farlander wished he'd brought more flashbangs.

As the two Jedi went up to the dais, the preacher gave them a smile and drew a ritual dagger. 'And now, my sons, we shall put you through the ritual of scarification. Extend your palms.

Farlander gulped and did as told. Corran did the same.

The preacher gripped Farlander's hand and raised the knife. 'Now tell me your name, boy, that we may know the name of our new comrade.'

Farlander raised an eyebrow at Corran, who nodded. It was time. Reaching into his inner reserves, Farlander stunned the preacher with the Force, disarmed him, then spun him around to use as a human shield.

'Jedi Knight Keyan Farlander,' he said. 'Everyone get your hands in the air! This is a sting!'

Corran drew his lightsaber and ignited it. 'Every damn one of you is under arrest on behalf of the Bastion planetary guard! You have the right to remain silent and anything you or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before-'

'FUCKIN' KILL 'EM!' yelled one of the cultists.

'Well, I guess that settles that,' Farlander said.

* * *

'Rogue Leader to _Claw_, we've been engaged by hostile Imperial forces on the edge of the Tarion Sector. Four TIE Avengers. They've opened fire.'

'Roger that, Rogue Leader. Alliance rules of engagement say you're clear to return fire.'

Sansar turned hard to starboard, chasing his target TIE Avenger. His crosshairs flickered between green and blue, locking on and off as the enemy pilot swerved and jinked. This guy was good. He would make a worthy first kill.

Recently introduced to the Alliance, the planet Garig was still considered one of the new 'infant' powers with its relatively small economy and low-tech military. Many of his fellow pilots had looked upon him like he was some manner of outworld yokel unversed in warfare and society. But he'd surpassed them all and joined Rogue Wing. More importantly, he'd joined Rogue _Squadron_, the true aces of the 108th. He proved that the men of Garig were more than capable of standing among the galaxy's warriors. Now if only this son of a bitch would fly still so he could-

'Three, this is Four. Having trouble shaking a bandit.'

-pop his combat cherry. The Gand could wait. This prey was all his.

'Three, a little help, please?'

He shut out the noise. The target was right where he wanted it.

'Rakash can't shake him, Three!'

Target lock. Sansar fired, tagging the bandit with a direct quad hit. The shot overloaded its shields and compromised the engine integrity, blowing the TIE into a fiery explosion. Distantly, he registered damage signatures appearing on Charr's status icon.

'Four here, lost top starboard foil and heavy damage to the engine!'

'Two, break off and support Four!' ordered Rogue Leader.

Syal rolled and looped, catching the TIE chasing Kasan in her sights. Not bothering with a good lock tone, she led her target and pulled the trigger. It was right on the money. Her shot skewered the ball cockpit, sending it careening off into space. Just then, Spark beeped, alerting her to new sensor sigs-the rest of the TIE squadron and an enemy Nebulon-B frigate.

'_Claw_, Rogue Leader. The Empire's escalated things. Eight more Avengers plus one Neb-B.'

'Stand your ground, Rogues. We're coming to you.'

* * *

'It's the Sith,' Ben said.

Myri rolled her eyes as she looked up from her hologame. 'It's _not_ the Sith. Not everything is some Sith plot.'

'Oh, come on. Every time something bad happens in the galaxy, it's the Sith. Except when it was the Vong.'

The Wraiths and several off-duty techs all sat in the _Tiger Claw's_ lounge, shooting the shit during this brief bit of any smart and enterprising band of grunts, the Wraiths had set up a betting pool on the _Claw. _The current pool was for the identity of the mastermind behind the attacks on the Empire, Jedi, and Alliance. Current bets showed that 'Rogue Imp Warlord' was at the top of the rankings, then 'Sith'. Other options included 'government conspiracy', 'Mandalorians at it again', 'La li lu le lo', and 'Vong'. Ben had, of course, dumped several weeks of back pay into the Sith option.

Myri raised an eyebrow. 'What about Thrawn?'

'He was hired by a Sith.'

'Darksaber?'

'Inspired by a Sith Lord's pet project.'

'But what about that time when-'

'Imperial,' Ben said. 'And thus, ultimately traceable back to our boy Sheevy P.'

'Bull,' Myri said. 'That guy was always evil. Besides, your dad and Master Katarn did a bang-up job of kicking the asses of every important Dark Sider to ever pretend he could be important.'

'Then again,' Jesmin added from another table, 'there's always some dumbass Dark Jedi who thinks he can bend the Force and the galaxy over a table and make them his bitches.'

'Dark Jedi, maybe,' Trey countered, 'but what about Sith? After Palpatine and Vader, can we really say any of the Dark Siders the Jedi have faced were really proper Sith? Versed in proper Sith philosophy and all that?'

'A couple,' Ben said, taking a sip from his tea. 'Not many. Most of the guys the Jedi have taken down over the years were Dark Jedi. But my gut says Sith this time, or at least someone above the average Dark Jedi.'

Scut stifled a burp after taking a swig of his fruit fizz. 'Then why haven't we seen any lightsabers?'

'Maybe this one's smart,' Piggy offered. 'Smart enough to see that slinging Force powers and lightsabers like an idiot only succeeds in a Skywalker- or Katarn-flavored ass-kicking.'

'Unlikely,' Ben replied. 'Dark Side use tends to make you go full retard. These guys haven't gone full retard just yet.'

'Maybe this is all some gigantic prank played by Major Wes Janson, official Alliance Prank Master,' Rosharra muttered.

Myri snorted, trying to imagine what sort of evil mastermind Uncle Wes would be.

* * *

Darth Janson roared with laughter as another world fell to his legions of storm-ewoks. From the comfort of his Super Star Destroyer's command chair, he watched the carnage via an orbital camera. Tides of diminutive, white-armored ursine minions drowned the stalwart, doomed defenders of the planet Bumblefuckus IV, the pained screams mixed with ewok battle-squeaks.

'Hahahaha! Burn! Everything burns!' Evil Wes tugged on his evil goatee and finished off the last of his space popcorn. 'Admiral Klivian! More snacks!'

Evil Hobbie also had an evil goatee. Adjusting his evil cybereye, he said, 'Yub yub, God-Emperor.'

* * *

'Not enough ewoks,' Myri said after a few minutes of thought.

'Point.'

The discussion was cut off by the sudden blare of klaxons. Immediately, Ben and the Wraiths dropped the conversation as they and the rest of the crew left to assume battle stations.

* * *

Wedge, Luke, and Captain Tomar made their own preparations for the ship's hyperjump. Luke settled into a relaxed sitting position in an unused chair, readying himself for a spot of battle meditation. Clad in his flight suit, he kept his helmet and flak vest in arm's reach in case he had to get back in the field. Wedge readied launch orders and formation commands on the bridge's hololith. He, too, was ready for a flight in case of emergencies. Meanwhile, Captain Tomar orchestrated the bridge crew himself, making sure the ship's power distribution was at optimal levels as the hyperdrive charged up.

'Ready for a jump, General,' the Captain said.

'Hit it,' Wedge said.

And with a flicker of pseudo-motion, the _Claw_ entered hyperspace.

* * *

All activity at the edge of the Tarion Sector skidded to a halt as the great MC100 dropped into the fray. Its considerable size, durability, and firepower made it an amazing deterrent and diplomatic aid. One just had to get a bit aggressive with negotiations.

Wedge set his broadcast to open comms. 'Attention Imperial craft. This is General Wedge Antilles of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. By order of the Pellaeon-Gavrisom Treaty, this sector is neutral space open for free, unmolested travel by both Alliance and Imperial military vessels. Your actions have violated that neutrality. Cease fire and pull back to the far edge of this star system now.'

After a few moments of comm lag, the Neb-B responded. 'By the authority of the Council of Moffs, our fleet has claimed the Tarion Sector as Imperial territory, Antilles. _Your_ fleet is in violation of Imperial borders.'

Wedge sighed. 'Captain, I have the Emperor's personal comm frequency on speed dial, as well as those of the Empress, Grand Admiral Pellaeon, and General-Baron Soontir Fel. Last I checked, none of them have notified me of these changes to your borders. Furthermore, you have one old Nebulon-B frigate and one depleted squadron of TIE Avengers. I have a factory-new MC100, Rogue Squadron, and a full load of anti-ship torps. I don't believe anyone wants to start another war here. Turn back now and retrieve your wounded, and my fleet and I will be on our way back to Alliance space.'

A longer pause this time. No doubt, the Imps were considering their options. If they weren't stupid, and Wedge hoped that was the case, they'd let the _Claw_ and her pilots leave safely.

'Very well, Antilles,' the Neb-B captain replied through gritted teeth. 'I'm sure this misunderstanding won't come back to haunt you in the future.'

'Likewise, Captain,' Wedge replied with false friendliness. He switched frequencies to an encrypted allied band. 'Rogues, return to base.'

'Yub yub, General,' Syal said.

* * *

As One Flight landed in the squad's hangar, techs rushed to get their fighters under the usual post-combat repairs. Charr was carted off to sickbay-minor shrapnel damage from a cockpit shot. While Kasan went to catch some downtime with the others, Sansar followed Syal to her office. It was little more than a storage cabinet with a desk and chairs. There wasn't much room for anything aboard a warship, even one as large as an MC100.

'Sit,' she said. Sansar did so.

'You left your wingman,' Syal stated simply.

'I-'

'Lieutenant, unless your sensors and comms were malfunctioning, there isn't an excuse for not covering your wingman. Especially not for someone from Garig.'

Sansar raised an eyebrow. 'You've studied my homeworld, Commander?'

Syal tapped one of the nearby datapads on her desk. 'I study all of my pilots' homeworlds, LT. I need to know what sort of considerations and adjustments to make for individual cultures and fighting styles. And I know that on Garig, military training emphasizes absolute loyalty to the unit and your fellow soldiers. What you did there was unacceptable, both by my standards and your homeworld's.'

Sansar sighed in defeat. He really didn't have any excuse there. 'I got greedy. Focused on kills and glory over supporting the squadron.'

'Garig's new to the Alliance, isn't it? You feel like you have something to prove. A few minor incidents of insubordination and some incidents with pilots from more established Alliance worlds.'

'I suppose so, yes.'

Syal rubbed her temples in frustration. 'Lieutenant, I picked you to join Rogue Squadron because your skills exceeded the standards we'd set for our incoming applicants. You don't have a thing to prove to the galaxy. And you're not going bring honor to the motherland if you go around ignoring your wingmen. When the Rogues fly, they fly as a team. I don't know how things worked in your last unit, but here, individual achievements don't mean a damn thing compared to supporting your wing. Rogue Four is lucky to only have a few shrapnel wounds. Things could have been a lot worse.'

'Shit,' Sansar muttered. 'So what does that mean for me? Am I hanging up my wings?'

Syal shook her head. 'No. I didn't recruit you if I didn't have faith in your ability to learn from your mistakes. Your file said you passed X-wing aptitude training at the top of your class despite the fact that Garig has only recently become hyperspace-capable. You're supposed to be a quick study, so learn from this.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Dismissed.'

He didn't need to be told about the consequences of a second screw-up like that. Depending on how bad the situation got, he'd either be drummed out of Rogue Squadron or vaped by the enemy.

* * *

Farlander vaulted over an overturned table as he chased the cult leader down the street. Behind them, the insurgents' little headquarters burned after a stray shot had set off an ammo cache. The rest of the cultists were either dead or handcuffed to the nearest streetlamp.

'Stop right there, criminal scum! Stop in the name of the law!' Corran yelled, chasing after the cultist as the latter commandeered a civilian speeder bike. He reached for his commlink. 'Danvik, we've found and destroyed an insurgent cell in the Neon district! Currently in pursuit of a straggler-he's taken a civilian vehicle and is heading down arterial G-19!'

'Roger that. Activate your transponders. We'll send support to your signal.'

The two Jedi used the Force to speed their movements, making haste for the speeder they had parked outside the Neon. Before Farlander had even planted his ass in the seat, Corran floored it and goosed the repulsors, chasing the stolen bike before they could lose sight of it. Corran zoomed through traffic, slipping past commuters. As the cult leader turned and drew a blaster, Corran channeled the Force into his senses, hastening his reflexes and perception of time to intercept the blaster bolts.

'Hold your fire!' Corran yelled as Farlander made for his blaster. 'We can't risk hitting any civilians!'

They chased the cultist further down the city highways and into a tunnel, gaining ground as Corran rolled the speeder up onto the tunnel ceiling. Suddenly, the perp sideslipped, breaking away from the speeder lane into a narrow space between a pair of corporate spires. Corran maxed out the throttle and circled around, the bike just barely missing them as it zipped past and down into another civilian lane.

Down below, Imperial combat speeders entered the chase as well while APCs cut off branching lanes. The cult leader leaped from his bike into a civilian's vehicle and kicked the unfortunate victim out. Thankfully, one of the Imperial Knights managed to catch the guy in a telekinetic grip before he fell too far. Corran swooped down at full throttle, though even Farlander could see the angle was off.

'You're going to overshoot him!'

'I know!'

'What?'

'I _know_!'

Corran pulled up as the altimeter read five hundred meters from the pavement, maxing out the repulsorlifts' power as they landed, the speeder bouncing on the ground with a shower of sparks as it touched down. Undeterred, Corran wrenched the control yoke sideways, turning it and hitting the accelerator. He drove _towards_ the cultist.

'Get ready to take the wheel! I've got an idea!'

Corran clambered onto the speeder's hood, using the Force to steady and anchor himself. Farlander scrambled to get into the vacant driver's seat, a wild grin on his face. His partner was every bit as batshit insane as him, he realized. The cultist raised and fired his blaster again, but this time, Corran was ready. He raised his right hand, using it to intercept the incoming shots and absorb their energy.

'Here I go!' he yelled, clenching his fist as the absorbed blaster energy glowed in his palm like a fireball. 'This hand of mine is burning red! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory!'

Corran jumped with a little boost from the Force before driving his fist into the hood of the incoming speeder, releasing the pent-up energy he'd absorbed as a telekinetic explosion and sending the stolen speeder hurtling end over end. As he skidded to a halt, Corran saw that the Imperial Knights had completely cut off this slice of highway and extracted the dazed but intact insurgent leader.

'Too fast,' the perp muttered, 'too furious!'

Farlander pulled up in their rented vehicle and let out an impressed whistle. 'Nice.'

Corran smirked and donned a pair of sunglasses. 'Thanks. And now that we've burned down his little operation, looks like our friend will have to find a new place to _crash_.'

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!


	7. Sheer Heart Attack

6

Sheer Heart Attack

So there they were. Two Jedi and their starfighters, staking out and patrolling Bastion's orbital dockyards while surrounded by unloaded ordnance, fuel lines, high-yield power cells, and dockworkers who may or may not have been insurgents in disguise. There were too many people walking around to make mind-reading feasible. Even if they found someone thinking treasonous things, it would have been a toss-up whether the guy was an actual insurgent or just having a really bad day. It was the kind of job that was both incredibly dangerous and mind-numbingly boring. The idea of action actually happening at some point was almost as appealing as the idea that nobody actually turned up to fight. Almost. Not even Farlander quite liked the idea of being blown up along with a huge chunk of Bastion's shipyards.

It didn't take long for the perp they'd arrested dirtside to talk. Neither Jedi knew what sort of interrogation techniques had been used on the guy, but it was the Empire. They had a pretty good idea.

Bastion Spacedock was a place of ordered chaos. A gigantic ring of connected compartments in low orbit, the dockyard was one of the Empire's last great hubs of activity. With modernized equipment and comparatively new facilities, the spacedock nearly rivaled Kuat's and Rendili's in output despite its smaller size. Even with the confusing shift of bodies and the labyrinthine nature of the docks, everyone knew their place. Every worker had a routine and clearance to a very specific list of sectors. Nobody strayed, nobody stirred up trouble. Security was tight, especially since the attacks on the Imperial City. In plainclothes, the Jedi, Imperial Knights, and ImpInt agents walked the work routes.

'See anything?'

'Nada.'

Farlander and Horn walked the corridors leading to compartment A-9, where a number of Star Destroyers from the SecDef fleet were undergoing repairs. Stuck in one of the three queues for A-9's security checkpoint, the two almost didn't see when one of the workers ducked away from the pack and into a side corridor. They armed their blasters and went after him.

* * *

Wedge gave his datapad another look. 'You're sure?'

'Not one hundred percent,' Tycho replied. 'But it's a lead worth investigating. It's the only other piece of information we managed to scrounge up so far.'

'Alright. I'll have the Wraiths do some snooping, then. Good work, Tycho.'

'No problem. Anyway, that's all we have on this end.'

'Right. Keep me updated and stay mobile.'

'Always. Celchu out.'

The holocomm display shut down as the call ended. He frowned. Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie had sent him data on a planet in the Outer Rim called Theris. Lightly settled and recently colonized, the planet's population mostly came from the Alliance garrison and its support personnel. It hardly seemed important, little more than a brief mention in the description of a holo the trio had found that contained a man with an Ouroboros patch in the background. Still, it wasn't too far off the fleet's patrol route. A couple of hyperspace jumps away at worst.

Time for the Wraiths to stretch their legs.

* * *

'So what is this place again?' Ben asked. He fidgeted uncomfortably, still unused to all the gear that came standard in the Wraiths' field kit. Parts of it still dug into his shoulders and back when he sat down. He wasn't officially a Wraith according to the paperwork, but they more or less treated him as one of the team these days. Having a lightsaber and a full suite of Force powers didn't hurt, either.

'Theris,' Piggy said. 'Minor Alliance research outpost. Nothing much under normal circumstances, but General Antilles says it's a possible link to those guys who attacked the Jedi Academy on Ossus.'

As the Wraiths' transport broke atmo, a flight of Rogue X-wings pulled in ahead of them.

* * *

'Show-offs,' one of the transport pilots muttered as one of the Rogues rolled into formation. 'Theris Base, Theris Base, this is Alliance transport _Not in the Face_. Requesting clearance and flight path for landing.'

A pause to allow for comm-lag. Nothing. 'Theris Base, I say again, this is Alliance transport _Not in the Face_. Requesting clearance and flight path for landing.'

Still nothing. The pilots tried again on a different frequency to no effect. 'Rogue Leader, this is _Not in the Face_, we're getting nothing from Theris Base. How's your comm situation?'

'Everything reads green with us, _Face_,' Syal answered. 'One second. Hailing Theris Base. Let's see if we have any more luck.'

Nothing, even after three more tries.

'_Face_, Rogue Leader. We're getting silence as well. Recommend you prep for a combat drop. We'll keep you covered then touch down someplace nearby once the Wraiths are dirtside.'

'Roger that, Rogue Leader.'

* * *

The copilot activated the transport's internal PA system and informed the Wraiths of the situation. Suddenly, Ben felt a sense of unease. Not the anxiety that came from your average combat situation, but from something else. Something was wrong in the Force. Horribly wrong. He just couldn't figure out what.

'You okay, Benny?' Myri asked. 'You look like you just had a bowl of bad Neimoidian take-out.'

'I'm okay,' he lied. 'Just the usual pre-mission jitters.'

'If you say so. Just let Drug Boy know if you're really feeling sick. He just got his medical degree.'

'Oi,' Drikall protested, 'I got it _last month_. I'm certified.'

'How reassuring,' Jesmin muttered.

'Quiet, you.'

Did Jesmin not sense it? She was Force-sensitive, too. Surely she sensed something off, right? Or did her lack of Force perception training keep her blissfully ignorant?

The landing ramp descended, ending his reverie as the Wraiths filed out in a typical combat spread. Ben followed suit, keeping his blaster carbine ready as he and the Wraiths advanced on the main entrance to the subterranean facility. Theris Base wasn't just silent. It was completely deserted. No guards, no techs or engineers, not even any local fauna. Piggy waved Trey forward.

The Wraiths' tech expert pulled out his slicing and repair tools as he got to work on the inactive control panel. A few seconds later, he'd disabled the ICE systems installed into the door. His hand hovered over the open button.

'Might want to get fully sealed up, just in case,' Trey suggested. 'It _is_ a biological research lab.'

'Point,' Piggy said, activating the vacuum and environmental seals on his gear.

Ben and the others did the same as Piggy fished out a sensor wand from his kit. Trey hit the button. As the blast doors slid aside, Piggy took point, keeping the sensor aloft as it took in the contents of the air that had been trapped underground. Nobody commented on the fact that the door controls inside had been shot. A single guard sat slumped against the wall. He'd committed suicide by headshot.

'Breathable,' Piggy said after a few minutes. 'Keep filters running at full, though.'

With that, the Wraiths shut off their vacuum sealing. Their suits didn't have much air in the tanks anyway-fifteen minutes with deep breaths, maybe twentyish if you were taking sips.

'You sure we won't catch any diseases from this?' Sharr quipped.

'Nothing that a little bacta won't cure.'

Of course, nothing inside the facility would actually hear the Wraiths' chatter. Everything was kept contained behind soundproof helmets and opaque visors. As the Wraiths progressed through the deserted base, their chatter gradually died down as their unease rose. The silent laboratory had a sepulchral, oppressive air to it. Blaster charring along the walls, blood trails on the floor, torn vents, and a nagging numbness in the Force that Ben simply couldn't quite figure out. Were there ysalamiri in here?

They reached a set of elevators which, as expected, were off. Piggy forced a set of elevator doors open and peered down and up, activating his low-light optics. The elevator sat at the bottom level and the cabling seemed relatively intact. Someone must have just cut power to the lifts.

'Clear.'

'Why do I get the feeling this is going to end horribly?' Ben asked.

Huhunna snorted. 'Because it probably will.'

* * *

'Why are we doing this again?' Kasan asked.

He and Syal were on a ridge, prone in the grass with a monocular and datapad. Sansar and Charr had landed on the opposite side of the building and were doing the same, too. Syal put down her monocular and added to the sketch on her datapad. Updates from the rest of the team also showed up on the digital drawing, albeit with a slight time lag due to the distance and weak signal.

'Getting a good idea of our AO,' Syal said. She tapped the datapad. She did a pretty good job, all told. 'Entrances and exits. We need to know how and where the Wraiths might exit. If the situation goes south, we need to know how to best plant our ordnance. I don't want our friends suffering proton poisoning.'

Syal checked her commlink. 'Rogue to Wraith, how are things going down there?'

Nothing. Syal risked boosting the signal and repeated the message to no avail.

'No response?'

'No. It's likely that they're too far underground for our comms to reach them. Get ready, though, just in case something bad does happen.'

* * *

'Shit, something bad happened here,' Trey muttered.

Theris Base's main underground complex was in ruins. Several dead Alliance troopers lined the walls, torn open and mutilated by some form of beast. A couple more lay limp on a makeshift barricade made of tables and crates. There was blaster charring on the far wall. Blood pools and trails on the floor and red emergency lights lent a hellish look to the whole place.

'First stop is the IT department,' Piggy said. 'If this base has a central server room, and I bet it does, we should probably be able to figure out what went on pretty easily. At the very least, we'll have access to the base's files, recent workstation activity, and security footage from there.'

'You think whatever did this is still in here?' Sharr asked.

Scut snorted. 'Does an ewok shit in the woods?'

The Wraiths pushed on, sticking together because splitting up was stupid and suicidal. As they went deeper and deeper into Theris Base's confines, the comfortable familiarity of Alliance architecture was broken up by encroaching plant life. Vines and creepers ran along the walls and floor. Shrubs grew in corners and the air grew more and more humid. Ben looked into one of the side doors.

'Ah, crap.'

'What?' Piggy asked.

'Guys? You may want to look in here.'

What they saw was a ruined bio-lab full of overgrown plant life, most of which seemed to come from a destroyed observation room. The climate controls and containment systems failed to keep the flora in check. But that wasn't the bad news.

'Yuuzhan Vong flora,' Scut said.

'What?'

'Plant life native to Zonama Sekot. Looks like they artificially Vongformed the inside of the containment chamber.'

Piggy facepalmed. 'Oh, for the love of crap. I thought we were done with this Yuuzhan Vong bullshit. No offense, Scut.'

'No, I thought the Vong War was an endless cavalcade of bullshit, too,' Scut said. 'I suffered plenty from said bullshit, remember?'

Piggy jerked his head in the direction of the server room. 'Come on. We'll have a better idea of what happened here once we access the base's files.'

* * *

Farlander and Horn ducked behind a wall as their prey looked back.

'Didn't see us,' Farlander signed. He dipped into the Force, expanding his perception. The footsteps continued at their usual pace after a moment. The Jedi followed. Bastion Spacedock's corridors were strangely quiet as they kept on. Nothing but the occasional sound of footsteps as they followed their quarry deeper and deeper into the station. Turn after turn after turn. It seemed like they were going in-

'Shit, are we going in circles?' Corran muttered.

'Feels like. Hold up for a second.'

The footsteps sounded again further down.

'Wait for it.'

Footsteps again-the same number, the same rhythm. They waited a third time.

'Does it sound like they're getting any farther away?' Farlander asked.

'No. It doesn't.'

'Well, that settles it. We've been had. I wasn't able to sense any voodoo on the other end. Someone out there has some Force talent. Or an ysalamiri and sound machine. Either way, I'm blowing it up.'

'While we're surrounded by fuel lines?'

'Would you rather have an unexploded bad guy?

'I'd rather have an unexploded _us_. And an unexploded space station. Remember what the Chief said about our budgetary constraints?'

'Why do you hate fun?'

'Fun is fine. Fun involves whisky, fast starships, and cake. Being turned into chunky salsa is not fun.'

Both of drew a little more from the Force, boosting their perception to pierce through the mental clouding. Where were they? Where were they?

_There!_

The two of them broke into a run. They just hoped they weren't too late.

* * *

Trey pulled out his slicing kit, plugging his datadeck into Theris Base's server jackpoint. The familiarity of Alliance code made it easy for him to crack the ICE systems in place, even if it did take time.

'You always this slow?' Jesmin asked.

'Calm your guns, hotshot. This isn't something any juvie hotdogger could slice. Whoever ran this place wanted security to be tighter than a virgin Twi'lek joytoy. There's enough gray ICE to slag my deck and black ICE to fry anyone wetwired in.'

'What?'

Trey dumbed down his netspeak to a more manageable level. 'Security thinky box big and scary. Me take time, make not so big and scary. Maybe not ruin mesa metal thinky box in process. Just a little more _aaaaand_ there we go. Punched in all smooth and clean-like.'

'Anything?' Ben asked from behind, standing on his tiptoes to look over Myri's shoulder.

'Most of the data's corrupted or incomplete. Whatever was here really frakked up the data storage. Looks like Scut was right. Yuuzhan Vong bio-experimentation. Or rather, a reverse of it. They were trying to reverse the effects of Vongforming and Vong implantation, looks like.'

Wran frowned. 'Alliance containment protocols are usually a lot better than this.'

'Yeah,' Trey muttered. 'Hold on, let's see the workstation activity. Pazaak, note-taking, more note-taking, holos of the test specimen - looks like a local herbivore but Vongified - a supply request for more chemicals, Spacebook, and-ah, here we go. Looks like someone copied some of the lab data onto a data drive. Standard EconoTek Cloudpass from the shelf.'

Piggy scratched his chin. 'I'm guessing our datathief wasn't a slicer worth a damn.'

'Probably not,' Trey said. 'If these guys followed the most recent version of Alliance lab milsec, the encryption should be top-notch without the appropriate datakey. And our guy didn't take that.'

'Was he in a hurry?'

Trey paused to pull up a security holo. A Yuuzhan Vong in Alliance lab clothes at his workstation, not-so-discreetly tucking his storage drive into a coat pocket. He looked repulsed at the idea of handling or being surrounded by all this tech.

'Yeah, he was,' Trey concluded.

'How long does it usually take to decrypt these things?' Piggy asked.

Trey ran the numbers in his head quickly. 'With a file this big? About two minutes with the datakey. Without? I'd say eighty, eighty-five years, and that's with a competent code jockey. Don't ask me to explain the math or code. Even the abridged version takes a college thesis to explain.'

'That's exactly what I calculated,' Piggy said proudly.

'So do we have this mystical, almighty datakey?' Huhunna grumbled.

Trey scoffed. 'Of course. Took it off one of the dead scientists. Can't use it here, though. The bit you use to jack in is, ah, a bit scabby.'

'Gross.'

'Alright,' Piggy said. 'We have what we need. Now we blow this place. Let's find the support beam and power core, set up some explosives, then ask the Rogues to double-tap it just in ca-'

Something dripped behind him.

'Uh, guys?' Ben asked calmly. 'Was there always a leak in the ceiling? And did it leak something with viscosity similar to mucus?'

Before the others could react, the Vong-beast tore the ceiling vent open, pouncing onto Ben. Most teenagers would have screamed and released any number of bodily waste products. It was, after all, the natural thing to do when jumped by a large mutated herbivore-turned-carnivore with nested mouths and more teeth than a pack of nexu. The carrion-stink of its open maw certainly didn't help. Then again, Ben wasn't most teenagers. He jammed his deactivated lightsaber into the beast's mouth, keeping it open, and punched it in the face. Before he could ignite the saber, the beast recoiled and tried to headbutt him, only for the Wraiths' gunfire to blow it off their young ward. The creature scrabbled back and spat out Ben's lightsaber, darting back into a vent before Wran could nail it with a kill-shot from his rifle.

'So is this going to be a stand-up fight or just another bug hunt?' Ben muttered.

The hungry yowling in the vents told him it didn't matter. He gingerly picked up his drool-covered lightsaber (ew ew ew ew) and booked it along with the rest of the team.


	8. Tokusentai! Tokusentai!

7

Tokusentai! Tokusentai!

Twelve TIE Interceptors and one stealth-armored transport lifted off from the second moon, formed up and ready to descend on Theris. They waited a minute to see if anyone had detected them. No target warnings or new sigs on sensors so far. Good. It was time to begin the operation.

'All green,' said the squad leader. 'Full throttle to the surface, then follow the terrain. Comms silence once we pass into the daylight side.'

'Roger that.'

The fighters' commander settled into his seat with a grin. It was time to bag some heroes. And if they were lucky, they could murder the Rogues before they got off the ground. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they descended upon Theris.

* * *

Few people in the galaxy ran away the Wraith Squadron way. Of course, few people ever carried that many antipersonnel mines. They booked it like a librarian in an A-wing, keeping their six o'clock covered with explosives and the occasional burst of gunfire as the lab's test subjects swarmed out of the vents. Ben made the jump up the elevator shaft easily thanks to the Force. The other Wraiths' ascent was a tad clumsier due to their use of miniature thruster packs, but thankfully they all made it out. Trey dropped a couple of demo charges down the elevator shaft and severed the elevator cables with his toolkit's plasma cutter just to be safe.

'Rogue Leader, Rogue Leader, come in!' Piggy fiddled with his commlink. Nothing but static. 'Shit. We're being jammed.'

'Not too far to open air,' Sharr said. 'Let's move.'

For good measure, the Wraiths dropped antipersonnel mines at the mouths of every air vent they passed as they ran to the exit doors. If they could get out into open air, they could probably find and shoot whatever was jamming them.

'Door control's not working,' Trey said. 'Going to have to slice it into complia-'

The doors blew inward, the blast scattering the Wraiths and knocking them senseless. The autosenses in Ben's helmet kicked in, dimming the visor and shutting down the audio to reduce the explosion's effects. He felt something slam into his chest, dropping him on his back. His visor cracked as something else hit him in the head, shutting off his heads-up display. Someone was screaming. He tested his own bits. Arms okay. Legs fine. Neck still worked. He raised his head a bit and saw a piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest. Nothing felt broken, so the armor must have taken the blow. As he regained his bearings, Ben realized that the jamming wasn't just in his comms. Someone was also actively blocking his Force senses. It was the same buzzing as before, but louder and more powerful now.

He willed himself to get up, patting out a flame on his pant leg. He had to get up, ready a weapon-_any_ weapon. Otherwise they'd all be de-

His helmet's autosenses normalized. As audio returned, he heard the sounds of a dogfight outside and the whine of heavy-duty repulsorlifts. As his vision adjusted to the natural light coming in from the breach, he saw a shuttle with a heavy laser cannon aimed right at him and five silhouettes arrayed beneath it.

No grenades, no demo charges, an empty rifle, a broken pistol, and his trusty lightsaber. Five hostiles and one giant ship-killing piece of ordnance on one side, a swarm of hungry vongfauna on the other. Ben ignited his lightsaber.

* * *

Sansar climbed hard as a pair of enemy Interceptors swooped over their hiding spot. Another wing pair came towards him and Charr as they cut repulsors and switched to full engine power. His brackets glowed green as the enemy Interceptor approached. Target lock.

'Splash one,' he said as he brought the fighter down.

'Four here, splash another.' Charr sniped its wingman a split second after.

Flying to the top of the furball, Sansar took a moment to survey the scene and get his bearings. A squadron of Interceptors and an unfamiliar transport model had attacked the AO. Lead and Two were in the thick of things but the TIEs swarming them prevented either X-wing from hitting the transport keeping the Wraiths pinned.

'Looks like they're trying to keep the transport alive,' he said.

'Makes sense,' Charr replied. 'They have a ground team, after all.'

'Any ideas?'

'Yes. Cover Rakash. And try not to get distracted this time, please.'

'Just watch me,' Sansar said.

Four took the lead this time, inverting and diving right for the enemy formation. They went through the center, lasers cycling, aiming more to scatter the TIEs than kill or damage. It worked, the enemy pilots breaking off on reflex as the pair's X-wings swooped in. The other Rogues saw the opening, gunning right for the enemy transport. It, too, saw the danger and kicked its engines into gear, leaving its covering position to fight off the X-wings.

'Missile lock! Break!'

Syal and Kasan split off, popped flares, and turned hard as the enemy transport loosed a pair of concussion missiles.

'Anyone else having trouble getting a torp lock on this bastard?' Kasan asked.

'Stealth ship,' Syal said. 'ECM interference is fucking with my targeting computer.'

'Rogue Leader, this is _Not in the Face_. We're powering up shields and weapons, en route to support.'

'Negative, negative, _Face_,' Syal said. 'Hold position and maintain stealth protocols. We cannot risk you getting shot down.'

Syal formed back up on Kasan and took the lead, circling around the shuttle to hit its vulnerable flanks. She couldn't risk using torps. The blast radius could end up cooking the already medium-rare Wraiths. Vaping it outright would have similar results but with more solid debris. If they compromised its hull integrity, the transport would be left without void capability. Cutting off the enemy's escape route would only make them angry and desperate, which would pose a problem for the Wraiths as well. So she had to do the next best thing-cripple its weapons. Swooping in low, she inverted, fired a quad-linked blast, righted her craft, and climbed. Rogue Two mimicked her move with a touch less finesse, slightly grazing the enemy transport as he pulled away.

'Two, you okay?'

'Flight-capable, boss.' Kasan checked his rear camera. 'Looks like we slagged that HLC. What about the missile launchers?'

'They're our next targets. Let's get a little more distance to set up, then go back in for another run.'

* * *

The five intruders were good. Very good. Armored, heavily armed, and incredibly coordinated, they gave Ben and the other injured Wraiths a run for their money. They looked like Imperial Knights in full field gear. Gauntlets made of either cortosis, beskar, or phrik allowed them to block Ben's strikes with ease as they darted in and out of combat, tagging him with light punches and kicks that only aggravated the pain from the earlier explosion. They were playing with him, much like some pack predators toyed with their prey before putting it out of its misery.

'Bloody hell, this bloke's bustin' a gut, ain't he, boys?' said one. Was that a Concord Dawn accent? Was that an _offensively stereotypical_ Concord Dawn accent? 'The boss sure would be dead chuffed if we snagged 'im fer our own!'

'Oh ho, definitely, but he's not quick enough to catch us,' replied another. This one had a strangely reptilian lisp. Trandoshan? 'Especially not enough to catch _me_!'

Ben backpedaled and parried a vibroblade, panting as he tried to catch his breath. 'Guys, a little help here would be nice.'

The shortest warrior laughed. He stood oddly, hands raised and clutching at the air. 'Your friends aren't going to be helping you any time soon, pal. Look behind you.'

Ben risked a glance. The Wraiths were all locked in place, held steady by the short one. Some twitched and struggled, trying in vain to move, take aim, do anything to fight back. Scut, meanwhile, was pinned to the ground by a piece of rubble. So at least one of these assholes was Force-sensitive.

A punch to the face knocked Ben out of his train of thought. Someone kicked him in the gut while he was down. He rolled with the blow, catching the next boot and pushing his assailant back. He saw his opening. Rising, Ben charged at the short guy, saber raised. As it descended, however, a white lightsaber blade stopped his blow.

'Now, now,' said another of the warriors, 'focus on _us_ instead, boy.'

Ben rolled to the side as the fifth and most heavily-built hostile embedded a meaty fist into the ground he once occupied. 'Heh,' he said. The man had the voice of a simpleton, slurred and slow. 'You're pretty good. I'mma have a lot of fun killin' you.'

Talk, Ben told himself. Keep them talking. Blather, as long as it leaves you with time to get your bearings.

'Just who the hell are you guys?' he breathed.

'Take a gawk at this!' said Concord Dawn. 'This bloke has no idea who we are!'

'That's classified, my boy,' the lightsaber wielder said. 'All you need to know is that we are the greatest warriors in the galaxy! Men! Formation Delta!'

The poses they struck were flamboyant enough to give an Adumari fashionista pause. Ben didn't really know what to think about all this. On the one hand, they were goofy as hell. On the other hand, they were perfectly capable of taking him apart if he wasn't careful.

'So, Concord Dawn guy,' Ben said, 'want to see something flash, as they say?'

'Do I? Gizza good one, mate!'

Unbeknownst to the five warriors, Ben had spent their spiel backing up towards the Wraiths. He acquired a flashbang from Fodrick's webbing during all the posing. Ben armed it and flung it right at the enemy formation. Luckily, his helmet's autosenses were up to snuff, blocking out most of the noise and light.

'You bitch! I'll have yer guts for garte-_barf!_'

Ben dropkicked him in the faceplate and used him as a springboard to leap towards the flash-blinded midget, beheading the diminutive Force-sensitive.

'Wraiths! Omega signal!' Ben called out.

'You don't have to tell me twice,' Huhunna grumbled. Injured, tired, and in pain from the Force stun, the Wraiths popped smoke and flares, signalling a call for evac as they retreated. Inside Theris Base, the baying of the Vong beasts increased in volume as they finally managed to reach surface level.

'Strewth, those Wraith bastards are piking out!'

'We get it already, you're from Concord Dawn!' Ben yelled back.

'Damn, those Wraiths run fast!' said the Snakeman. 'I mean, uh, not as fast as me, but-'

Ben threw his lightsaber, catching the maybe-reptile's kneecap before calling the weapon back with the Force.

'Oh, you bitch!' the Snakeman hissed.

As the Wraiths filed into their shuttle, they laid down what suppressing fire they could until the shuttle hit the thrusters and closed the drop ramp. They collapsed back into their seats in silence, still too tense to celebrate in light of the ongoing dogfight.

'_Not in the Face_ to Rogues,' the transport pilot said, 'precious cargo retrieved. We're breaking away from the engagement zone and setting a course for Waypoint Charlie.'

'Roger that, _Face_,' Syal replied. 'We'll keep you covered and exfil as soon as we've sterilized this site.'

* * *

When the Wraiths returned to their home ship, they disembarked with cheers and whoops. Any mission where the whole team came home safe was a good one, and a mission where the whole team came home from an encounter with Force-sensitives was even better.

Myri put Ben into a friendly headlock. 'That's our Boy Wonder!'

'Nice move with the flashbang there,' Piggy said, giving the kid a heavy pat on the back. 'Hell of an exit, team. Drinks are on me post-debrief, so get your AARs done double-quick.'

'Something better than Lomin ale for once, boss?' Wran asked.

'Whyren's Green Label. But just this once.'

'Just a ginger ale for me, thanks,' Ben said. He was still too young to drink according to Coruscant law.

Whyren's Reserve Green Label was the highest grade available on conventional markets, a single malt whisky from Corellia's cold north. The Blue Label stuff was blended-still good for what it was, but far from premium. The Whyren Brewery Company did release an excellent limited-edition cask strength batch long ago to celebrate the Battle of Endor, but cases of that were impossibly rare and ludicrously expensive. The only alcoholic beverages that fetched a higher price on the market were authentic Alderaanian wines. Alderaanian grapes, soil, and production methods still existed in the galaxy, but the post-Yavin vintages were merely premium booze rather than an oenophile's dream come true. Many Alderaanian refugees also looked at such concoctions as insults to their once-proud tradition of viticulture. Tycho Celchu got particularly insufferable when the subject of fine wine was brought up. And don't even get him started on the winemakers of Naboo and Hapes.

Where were we again? Oh, right.

Ben bade the Wraiths a see-you-later as he went to his quarters to clean up. Luke met him at the hangar exit. The old Jedi Master was in his flight gear. It looked like he'd just returned from a mission of his own.

'Just saw off another pack of Imperial aggressors a few hours ago,' he said, giving Ben a high-five. 'Good to see you're back in one piece.'

Ben shrugged. 'It was a close call. We got flattened by a heavy laser cannon, nearly got smoked by five enemy Force-sensitives, and escaped a base full of mutated monsters. Also, turns out blowing things up is a lot of fun. We'll, ah, fill you and Uncle Wedge in on all the details during the debriefing and AARs.'

'Huh,' Luke said. 'Sounds like you're practically a Wraith already. Promise not to tell your mother?'

'Of course.'

Mara was currently on a diplomatic mission with Leia, Winter, Han, and Chewie, she was worried sick about Ben. The poor kid's e-mail inbox was full of mom-mail. You know the kind. Emotional, saccharine, and full of emoticons and ridiculously trivial reminders. Wash behind the ears, don't date Dark Siders, remember that detonite can be shaken while baradium-4 can't. She was a little overprotective after her five-year hiatus in the afterlife. It was hard to fault her, though. She was a good mom, even with all the absences and danger her job required.

Shit, Ben thought, I've really got to write back to her.

* * *

Back on Coruscant, Hobbie, Wes, and Tycho made their way to their next safehouse. They had to stay on the move, relocating every night to make sure nobody on their trail caught them. They readied their blasters as they reached the door. Tycho ran a scanner over the frame and found it free of explosives or traps. He tapped the button and took a big step over the threshold in case there were tripwires. Hobbie and Wes did the same and followed him inside. Wes shut the door behind them. Even with the upper levels' wastewater rain pattering down on their safehouse window, they made sure to maintain silence.

'Hold up,' Hobbie whispered. He spotted something. Taking the risk, he lit a flashlight and shined it on an anomaly silhouetted against the window. It was a chair. Someone sat in it, back turned to them. Tycho and Wes spread out and kept him covered as he advanced, creeping forward slowly. As he neared the chair, Hobbie heard something else over the rain. Beeping. And it was rapidly picking up in tempo.

'Bomb!' he yelled. 'Move!'

He kicked the chair towards the window and hurled himself back. The bomb exploded and for a few seconds, the world was nothing but noise and fire. Hobbie couldn't hear anything but the ringing in his ears. He turned his head and saw Tycho applying pressure to a shrapnel wound in his side. Probably non-fatal. His breathing felt labored. Odd. What was going on? Someone was yelling. Was that blood? Was that _his_ blood?

'Hobbie?' Wes called out. 'Hobbie!'

'Wes?' Hobbie slurred. 'Wha's goin' on?'

'You're hurt bad. Hold on, we'll get you to a doctor.' For once, Wes looked completely serious. Oh shit. Hobbie looked down. It _was _his blood.

Tycho groaned as he got up. 'We're compromised,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Come on!'

'How?' Wes asked.

'Out the window. Ten creds says they're about to breach the door.'

'What about Hobbie? In his state, he shouldn't even be mobile.'

Tycho shook his head and plucked a sticky charge from a belt pouch. 'It's that or we die in a shootout. Choose fast.'

Wes sighed. 'Screw it. Window. Sorry, Hobbie.'

He picked up their injured comrade as gently as he could, still eliciting a groan of pain.

'You first,' Tycho said. 'I'll cover you.'

'Shit,' Wes breathed, looking at the drop. Not too far, but it would be painful as hell. 'You'll thank us for this later, buddy.'

Wes jumped, catching the brunt of the impact. Even then, Hobbie let out a string of curses as they landed. After a bit of struggling, Wes managed to get the two of them up. Then they heard gunshots. A couple of bolts hit the building opposite the now-ruined window. Tycho followed a second later, his jump botched by the explosives he'd set in the safehouse.

Wes used his free hand to pull Tycho up. 'There's a military hospital a couple levels up,' he said. 'Civvie hospital three down, and a whole lot of back-alley med school drop-outs in between.'

'Military option,' Tycho said. 'Better security there, and we might find someone we know who can help us.'

'Sounds good. You able to take point?'

Tycho drew his blaster. 'For now, but we stick to the shadows. If we get into a firefight in this state, we're all dead.'

'Alright, then. Lead the way.'


	9. Hell March

8

Hell March

'Hold on,' Ben said. 'Could you rewind the footage? Back to the lightsaber fight.'

Huddled around a hololith table, the Wraiths reviewed the action from their latest mission. This was standard procedure for most Alliance military units, especially in the intelligence and special forces communities, where new threats popped up constantly. Studying what went wrong, what could be improved, and what worked well helped keep the tactical manuals up-to-date. And due to the presence of enemy Force jockeys, Luke was called in as an additional analyst as well.

'Eager to see your moment of glory, Ben?' Piggy quipped.

'Not that. Something looks off about it. Not sure what just yet. Now play it again in slow motion, please.'

Piggy did so, letting the projector replay the holo-capture footage taken from the Wraiths' armor cameras. This time, the holographic facsimiles of Ben and the enemy Force-sensitives moved at half speed.

'There we go,' Ben said. Piggy hit pause. 'These guys aren't Imperial Knights.'

'What do you mean?'

'We've lost contact with Jagged Fel and Jaina Solo. First off, what are Knights doing so far from the Emperor? If the situation on Bastion has forced Jag and Jaina to go dark, wouldn't every Imperial Knight be on the homeworld on full lockdown mode? This looks like a false-flag operation.'

'Maybe these guys were renegades,' Scut offered.

'I don't think so,' Ben said. 'Knights are picked and trained to be fanatically loyal to the Imperial Family. They're supposed to be too disciplined to go renegade. And second, their movements are all wrong. They don't fight like Imperial Knights.'

'He's right,' Luke said. 'These guys are too aggressive. The footwork and movement all come from more aggressive fighting styles. Imperial Knights are bodyguards. Their training focuses on defensive saber forms. These guys are too spread out, too loose. Definitely formally trained, though, and better than run-of-the-mill Dark Jedi.'

'Piggy frowned. 'Better than your typical Dark Jedi? How _much_ better are we talking?'

Luke shrugged. 'Not sure, but they certainly don't flail around like idiots. Sorry. There's not enough to really tell, I'm afraid. We'd need more data to be sure. The fact that these guys knew we were coming and had Imperial resources, though, is rather worrying. Whoever these Dark Jedi answer to, he's got deep pockets and a whole lot of friends in high places. I get the feeling their leader and the guys who attacked the Jedi Temple are in cahoots.

Jesmin raised a hand. 'Do any of the false Knights look Jedi-trained?'

Shaking his head, Luke replied, 'If they were, they likely didn't go through _our_ combat courses. Too sloppy, too slow. Master Katarn trains our people to a much higher standard. He'd have these guys running punishment PT on day one.'

Ben shuddered. 'Don't remind me. I still have nightmares.'

Trey, Wraith Squadron's resident fitness and health nut, raised an eyebrow. 'How bad could it have been?'

* * *

A long time ago on a planet far, far away, Ben and the rest of his class suffered through Kyle Katarn's PT power hour. At the moment, he had them all doing push-ups while wearing weights meant to represent all the gear, explosives, and ammunition he carried while infiltrating the late _Arc Hammer_.

'Cripes,' groaned a Mon Cal student. 'This is a load of barnacles.'

Ben shook his head, dripping sweat and out of breath. 'I know, right?' he gasped.

'I heard that, maggots!' yelled Master Katarn from across the gymnasium. A few seconds later, Ben saw Kyle's boots in front of him. 'And you know what, you two? It's your lucky day. Get up. No more push-ups for you two.'

The Mon Cal let out a sigh of relief. 'Oh, thank the F-'

'Instead, you two get fifty laps around the temple complex. Full weights.'

There was a pause as the two padawans tried to process the magnitude of their fuck-up. Then it hit them. Kyle ushered them out the door. Ben and the Mon Cal got started with their run, muttering profanities and insults about Kyle's female relatives along the way.

'TALK SHIT, GET FIT!'

* * *

Trey nodded in approval, the maniac. 'Seriously?'

'Seriously. Shit was cray, yo.'

'What about the Vong creatures?' Luke asked, getting back on topic. 'What happened to them?'

'Exterminated,' Piggy answered. 'The Rogues hit the base with bunker busters and sterilized the area with torps and lasers.'

'What about the Knight you guys killed? Did you retrieve the body or any belongings?'

Piggy shook his head. 'Negative. Area was too hot for that. I'll ask the General if we can send a probe droid back there to salvage what it can. Anybody have anything else to add or ask?'

Silence.

'Good. Meeting adjourned,' Piggy said. 'File those AARs soon as you can, ladies and gentlemen. Then you're all free until the next mission or until our code monkeys finish decrypting and cleaning up the files we retrieved.'

Well, at least one potential headache averted, Luke thought. No need to worry about Vong shenanigans back on that planet. Still, the false Knights were worrying. How much Imperial gear did they have? How deep were their sponsor's pockets? And what was their connection, if any, to the X-wing attack on Ossus?

He hoped Kyle's team was having better luck in Imperial space.

* * *

In the space above Bastion, Farlander and Horn raced to stop the cult from tearing the spacedock apart. With a rough fix on the enemy Force-sensitive's position, the two Jedi had to move fast to put him down before he could cause any damage. The labyrinthine layout of Bastion Spacedock certainly wasn't making things easier. Every few turns, they had to consult signs or their maps to make sure they weren't heading towards a dead end. To make their chase even worse, their target was exceedingly good at clouding their Force senses. After a few minutes, however, they eventually herded him towards a dead end hangar. Taking cover on either side of the entrance blast doors, the two Jedi readied their weapons. Farlander counted down. On three, he hit the open button and poked his blaster out of cover.

Inside the hangar, a number of civilian freighters sat side-by-side as techs set about refueling them. No black pajamas or evil spikes in sight. Damn, purging evil was going to be harder than they thought. Damn these Dark Jedi and their awareness of the art of disguise. It would almost have worked if not for the fact that Farlander and Horn weren't completely blocked from sensing other Force-sensitives. This close to their target, it was easy to find out who was sending out the psychic static.

'Psst,' Horn hissed.

'What?'

'Mnrgh, mnrgh,' Horn grunted, jerking his head to either side.

'What?' Farlander whispered, approaching their target. He grabbed a man by the shoulder and put a blaster to his head. 'Hands where I can see them, dirtbag. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. Any more Force shenanigans, though, and the only thing the court will get is a habeas corpse.'

Just when Farlander thought they were home free, however, someone put a knife to his neck.

'Oh, goddammit,' Horn muttered as a bunch of burly terrorists disarmed and manhandled the two Jedi. Soon enough, they were stripped of their gear, with a pair of thugs shoving them towards the wall to be executed. 'Why didn't you tell me about these guys?'

'I _did_. I said, "Mnrgh, mnrgh,"' Corran protested.

'The hell was _that_ supposed to mean?'

'It means, "I go _this_ way and you go _that_ way,"' Corran said.

'I go _this_ way and you go _that_ way?'

Horn nodded.

'Ah.'

In one smooth motion, Farlander and Horn turned, slugged their captors in the throat, kicked them in the plums, and stole their weapons, using the stunned cultists as human shields. While Corran took his executioner's knife and threw it into another cultist's forehead, Farlander turned his human shield into a battering ram, scattering a pack of smaller hostiles before taking the man's pistol and shooting them. One of the cultists swing a crowbar at him, knocking the pistol out of his hand. Before he could go for a backswing, Farlander clocked him in the head with a toolbox. Outnumbered and outgunned, the only hope the two Jedi had of survival was to use their enemies as cover. Horn doubted even these fanatics would be willing to sacrifice men to friendly fire before their operation began.

With boots and fists and stolen weapons, the two Jedi fought for their lives. Still, an experienced Jedi without his lightsaber was just a slightly more dangerous mortal. And outnumbered, the two of them began to falter. Farlander took an elbow to the nose and dropped, still struggling as boots lashed out. A knife to the shoulder and a shock stick to the leg put Horn down as well. There were simply too many to fight, even with the aid of the Force. The only thing that kept them from certain death was the timely intervention of an Imperial Knight fireteam. Cutting through the hangar's locked blast doors, the Knights stormed in with blasters, shotguns, and lightsabers. The heavily-armed Knights went about the butcher's work with terrifying efficiency.

'We came soon as we heard gunfire,' the team leader said. Given the station's size and the blast doors' thickness, it was likely that he and the other Knights on guard duty had their Force perception cranked up to eleven. How they filtered out the civilian background noise was beyond Corran.

Horn cursed as the Knights' medic tended to their wounds, wincing at the sting of an antibiotic spray on the knife wound. 'You sure took your time.'

'Had to navigate while this chucklefuck was working his voodoo.' The team leader gestured at the enemy Force-sensitive, who had been amputated, stabilized, and restrained. He still tried to move occasionally. The sedatives were taking a while to kick in. 'We don't have much time to stick around, I'm afraid. We need to get back on our patrol route in case someone else tries to slip b-'

Just then, the floor rumbled gently. Alarm klaxons blared. Distant explosions, the smell of ionized air, and the muffled panic of civilians caught in a crossfire. The two Jedi were already back on their feet.

'You were saying?' slurred the sleepy enemy Force jockey.

'Silence him,' the team leader said. The Knights' pointman obliged with a gun butt to the guy's face. With that, Horn and Farlander retrieved their gear and followed the Knights into the chaos of Bastion Spacedock.

* * *

Aboard _Spirit of Purgation_, Moff Kelik attempted to command his flagship's defense. He stood before the hololith table on his Star Destroyer's bridge, watching a holographic blueprint of his vessel. Marine fireteams and unknown boarders did battle across the upper decks, highlighted in red, while a fuel line explosion had disabled systems and comms in the ship's belly, rendering that region black. One by one, battle reports stopped as teams went silent and upper deck sectors faded to black as well. At least one Marine unit had reported comm jammers before fading into static.

Kelik drew his service pistol and put it on the tactical hololith table. A squad of stormtroopers took cover in front of the elevators that connected his ship's command tower to the rest of the vessel. Drumming his fingers nervously, he reached for his commlink again. But before he could hail any of the marines, the haze on the upper decks lifted. Black had turned to a calming blue.

'All teams, report,' he said.

One by one, he heard all-clear signals from each unit. The rumbling of explosions and mass gunfire had stopped. Odd. The fierce resistance rapidly moving throughout his ship had suddenly evaporated, as if it was nothing more than a drill. Kelik jumped as the elevator to the command deck dinged. He turned around and holstered his pistol. Probably the commander of his ship's trooper detachment. He would have to offer the man hearty praise for that spirited defense. Surely, he could-

The doors opened to reveal that it wasn't the marine commander, and the others behind him weren't _Spirit_'_s_ marines. They were stormtroopers, yes, but they had different unit markings. Circular, colorful, and almost hypnotic in their artistry.

'Savik?' Kelik gasped. 'The reports all said you were dead!'

'Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated,' Savik replied smoothly, stepping out of the elevator. The two Moffs walked back into the bridge as their personal guards spread out. 'I had to keep my head down, so I had my agents keep the news as it was. Needed to throw my enemies off my scent, after all.'

'Oh, good. What are you doing here?'

'There was fighting and my men and I were in the neighborhood,' Savik said. 'We offered to lend a hand.'

'Ah. Well, I am in your debt, then, Savik. So is it over?'

In one smooth motion, Savik drew his blaster and shot Kelik in the gut. As the wounded Moff tried to call for his guards, his mouth filled with blood. When he looked around for someone, anyone, he only saw Savik's men withdrawing knives from the throats of his own dead troopers.

'No, my friend,' Savik said. 'It has only begun.'

Moff Savik put another bolt in Kelik's head and walked over to the bridge's gunnery control terminal. Bastion itself was under a perpetual planetary shield. It was immune to orbital bombardment. The spacedock, however, was nowhere near as invulnerable.

'"And so he lit a great flame, that he could cleanse apostasy from the land,"' Savik muttered, quoting an old myth from Kelik's homeworld. '"He became a spirit of purgation, an angel sent to save the faithful."'

The Star Destroyer turned its massive turbolasers toward Bastion Spacedock and opened fire. And on the ground, the rest of Savik's militants rose up once more to set the planet to the torch.

* * *

Wes, Hobbie, and Tycho were half-dead from blood loss and exhaustion when they collapsed in the lobby of Rhana Salfield Military Hospital. Named after a doctor aboard the late medical frigate _Redemption_, Salfield Hospital was already used to combat injuries showing up on its doorstep. Situated close to Coruscant's lower-middle levels, military personnel on leave often came in after bar brawls, run-ins with unsavory underhivers, and encounters with some of the more hostile mutant life.

After some complaining, painkillers, and hot food, Wes and Tycho turned out to be alright. Sore, bruised, and tired, all they needed was a few pills and a quick swig of some bacta infusion to be combat-ready again. Hobbie, however, was a whole different story. His injuries from the blast, worsened by his fall, would keep him switching between bacta tanks and bed rest for a while. And since the burns were on his back, he would have to spend all his time in bed belly-down. Thankfully, he had all the ice cream he could eat and a helpful nurse.

'Oh my, the poor thing!' the nurse gasped. She bent down to get her face level with Hobbie's. Wes looked and he liked what he saw. 'There, there, Major Klivian, you just get some sleep for now. I'll be taking care of you for the duration of your stay, so just let me know if there's anything you need, alright?'

'Thank you, nice medical lady,' Hobbie slurred. Then he lost consciousness.

Wes and Tycho exchanged a glance. While the nurse tended to Hobbie's injuries, Tycho had to physically restrain Wes to keep him from literally shooting himself in the foot.

'You already hit on the librarian,' Tycho whispered angrily. 'Let him have this!'

'Dammit, Tycho, I can't! She's got curves that put _Home One_ to shame!'

And since they couldn't leave Hobbie alone and out cold, the two put their investigation of the mysterious Ouroboros unit on hold, at least until Hobbie was awake and capable of holding a blaster again. So they set up a secure comm line, e-mailed Wedge, and went down to the food court. Tycho got a bowl of meat, cheese, and greens from the Bantha Bandito, while Wes went to Top Bun to pick up a nerf burger and a plate of Mighty Wings. And now, all they could do was wait and hope that someone didn't blow up the hospital.


	10. Let Me Live

9

Let Me Live

For a few moments, Bastion Spacedock's daylight zone bore witness to the birth of a miniature star. _Spirit of Purgation's _self-destruct sequence engulfed one of the massive military docking platforms, annihilating every last person still inside. Adjacent platforms burned as well, heavily damaged by the Star Destroyer's point-blank bombardment. The hulks of destroyed civilian craft drifted in the void as well, caught shieldless and unaware when Moff Savik initiated the autofire command on the captured Star Destroyer's weapons. While Imperial port authority craft rushed to perform damage control duties, Farlander and Horn rushed to their starfighters. As Corran settled into his X-wing, he prioritized power to comms.

'Danvik, it's Horn. Do you have eyes on craft from _Purgation_?'

Static. He tried another frequency and repeated the hail. Still nothing. Whistler beeped angrily.

'You think I don't know we're being jammed?' Corran snapped. 'Alright, launch checks complete. All systems green. Farlander, status?'

'I've _been_ ready.'

Alright, Corran thought, here we go. The two Jedi launched, strike foils unfolding as they searched both the stars and their targeting computers for the errant shuttle or TIEs. There was no way in hell the ringleader of the spacedock attack was on the Star Destroyer when it blew. Simple visuals were no use in this mess-every single Imperial starship looked the same thanks to Kuat, Sienar, and Cygnus' fetish for standard-issue Imperial Gray.

'Unusual movement sighted,' Farlander said. 'Lambda and four TIE Interceptors on a course for the Imperial City.'

Corran had Whistler look in on Farlander's targeting data. Their identifier codes all bore alphanumeric sequences designating them as part of the _Spirit__'s_ complement of small craft.

'That's our perp,' Horn said. He switched to one of the Imperial Knight channels, hoping that there were still friendlies close enough to hear his message despite the jamming. 'All Knight units, this is Jedi Master Horn. We've got eyes on hostile craft en route to the Imperial City. In pursuit but requesting backup.'

Not waiting for a reply, he maxed the throttle and switched to torps. 'Kill the TIEs first, then we force the shuttle to land.'

'Sure,' Farlander said. 'Could just ion the bastard right now.'

'We need him alive.'

'After what that son of a bitch did to all those people? If the fucker survives the crash, you can have him.'

'Look, if we can capture this asshole, we might be able to find out who his boss is and what connection he has to the Jedi Temple and false Imp attacks.'

As they closed in, the TIEs J-turned to meet the two Jedi craft. Both Farlander and Horn double-locked their torps and fired, scattering the TIEs. One died right off the bat, vaped by the quick-maneuver proton torpedoes. Switching to lasers, the Jedi starfighters got stuck in, knife-fighting with the enemy pilots. So far, neither Jedi sensed any Force signatures from the surviving TIEs or the shuttle. No Force void, either, which meant no ysalamiri. Rolling hard to starboard, Corran led two of the squints on a chase. Whistler let out an alarmed tone.

'I know what I'm doing,' Corran muttered.

As they entered Bastion's atmosphere, the TIEs' maneuverability advantage disappeared. Unshielded, the squints suddenly had to account for their poor aerodynamics while Corran's X-wing remained unhindered. Pulling hard on the stick, Corran turned the tables on his pursuers, lining up his sights on the aft of the portside TIE. Overriding his X-wing's cooldown protocols, he double-tapped the port TIE with a pair of quad-linked blasts. The starboard squint tried breaking off, sideslipping and climbing back up towards the void. Focused on Corran, the TIE pilot never noticed that he'd flown right into the B-wing's sights. Ever the opportunist, Farlander splashed it with a blast from his heavy laser cannon before K-turning and slagging the last squint.

'Good shooting,' Corran said. 'Now for the shuttle.'

'Ten credits says he's leading us into a forest of SAMs.'

'No bet.'

* * *

On the _Claw's _habitation deck, the Wraiths passed their time with PT, games, and idle chatter. As Myri and Ben practiced CQC, Trey passed them for the second time in as many minutes. An impressive feat considering the fact that he was wearing fully loaded webbing and a chem warfare suit.

These days, the New Jedi Order encouraged versatility among its members. In addition to Alliance and Imperial guest instructors, the Order had managed to gather many Order 66 survivors from smaller Force traditions. Though lightsaber combat remained the core of the average Jedi's fighting style, Luke and Kyle had encouraged these survivors to pass on their skills and knowledge to the younger generation. Ben had chosen to study the path of the Matukai in addition to his regular bladework. After hearing about that one time Master Katarn had to punch all those Kell Dragons to death, Ben decided that it was probably a smart idea to learn how to be useful even when bereft of lightsabers and conventional weapons.

'Woo woo!' called out one of the marines over by the weight machines. 'Slay that dragon, bro!'

'We've got a superhero on board!' yelled another marine.

Trey gave them a jovial one-fingered salute. 'Brother, I put on my superhero uniform every day I'm in the service!'

Myri shook her head. 'Tryhard. Or should I say treyhard?'

'I heard that, Antilles!' Trey yelled as he completed another lap.

Ben snickered, stepping to the sidelines to take a break. 'Hey, some men just want to watch the galaxy burn. Calories.'

'Tell me about it,' Scut said, sipping from a canteen as he joined them on the benches. 'You want to get rich quick? Forget the stock market. Porn. Starring Trey and Turman.'

'You've got a sick mind, Smut,' Myri said, chuckling. She got off the bench, tousled Ben's hair, and set off for the lockers. 'I'm going to get washed up. Later, guys.'

As soon as she was out of earshot, Scut looked at Ben and gave him a thumbs-up.

'What?'

'Nice,' Scut said conspiratorially. 'I saw where your eyes were going. She has many traits you humans would consider attractive.'

'No idea what you're talking about,' Ben replied nervously. Nope. No, sir. Totally pure, platonic thoughts about training, high fives, and Myri's legs. Wait. Goddammit.

_Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, brain,_ Ben thought to himself.

_You're welcome_, replied Lando Calrissian's voice.

Ben's reverie was interrupted when Jesmin used his head as an armrest. 'It's just hormones,' she quipped. 'Besides, he's stared realizing that other girls are cute. Maybe it's a sign he's gotten over his ex.'

Oh shit, what ever _did_ happen to Vestara? He'd completely forgotten about her over the past few weeks. Was she okay? Was she still alive? Was she still open to redemption? He needed to set a reminder to call her later and-

Brain-Lando mentally slapped him. _Come on, Ben, old buddy, remember the last date you two had? Or the date where she almost literally stabbed you in the back? And not in the sexy way! And you didn't even get laid after that knife fight! You deserve better! You deserve a girl who doesn't turn to the Dark Side at the drop of a hat!_

_But she's older than me!_ Ben's rational side protested.

_Did that ever stop Leia Organa from chasing after Han Solo?_ Brain-Lando asked. _Did that ever stop every lady in the Imperial Navy from admiring Gilad Pellaeon's mustache?_

'Oi, Ben. Reality to Mime Boy,' Jesmin said, waving her hand in front of Ben's face. She snapped a finger.

'Gah!' Ben jumped at the noise, his train of thought derailed. 'I really need to stop turning to Lando for advice.'

Scut and Jesmin traded a confused look. 'What?'

Shaking his head, Ben said, 'Nothing. Ignore me. I don't even know anymore, man.'

* * *

Farlander and Horn pursued the enemy shuttle across Bastion's skies, dodging turret fire as they tried forcing it to land. As they raced past one of the city's massive skyscrapers, Farlander hit the weapon toggle and tagged the shuttle with an ion shot, bursting its shields.

'We need to put this guy down now before he brings in the AA, Horn!' Farlander said.

Corran fired another warning shot at the shuttle to no effect. 'I know, but-Shit! Missile lock! Break!'

Dirtside missile teams fired SAMs, their contrails streaking high up into the air. The Jedi popped flares, maintaining pursuit as they hounded the shuttle.

'Whistler, dump as much of our discretionary power as possible into our jammers!' Corran ordered, rolling to maintain a targeting solution.

Farlander cursed, recharging his ions. 'I'm seeing more heat sigs on the ground. Fuck it, we need to shoot this guy down _now.'_

_'_We need him alive!' Corran protested.

'With all these SAMs, it's either we risk a kill or we get vaped!' Farlander locked on and fired, disabling the Lambda's engines. Disabled and out of power, the Lambda dropped like a brick. 'Bogey disabled. Time to pick this fucker up.'

Farlander punched in a series of commands for the droid brain he'd spliced to his fighter's systems before dropping from his cockpit to street level. Corran disembarked, trusting Whistler to put the X-wing down nearby. They advanced on the wreckage, putting down the stormtroopers who had managed to get clear. As they reached the landing doors, Corran kept watch while Farlander advanced.

'Contact,' Farlander said. 'Looks like our HVT.'

He emerged dragging a man in unmarked Imperial officer uniform. The officer pulled himself up and did his best to dust off his clothing. Gotta hand it to the man, he still had that stiff upper lip going.

'Now, gentlemen,' said Moff Savik, 'I-'

Farlander decked him in the face.

'What the hell, man?' Corran picked the perp back up.

'Thank you,' Savik said, wiping a bit of blood from his face. 'So you've captured-'

Corran stunned Moff Savik in the dick. Then he fired another stun shot to make sure. 'Come on, let's get the hell out of here. This crash site's going to be a goddamn anthill in a few minutes.'

'No need to tell me twice,' Farlander said, keying his commlink. 'Farlander to Bishop, enemy officer captured. He's secure for the time being. We're bringing him to you.'

Farlander stuffed the unconscious Moff into his B-wing's cargo bay with a barf bag and a roll of paper towels. 'Hey, Horn, how good are you at street-level flying?'

Corran shrugged. 'The last notable time I tried anything fancy in a city, I ended up getting a presidential suite on _Lusankya._'

'Wanna race starfighters?'

'_Bitchin'_.'

And so they did. And it was fast and it was furious.

* * *

The hospital was full of blaster charring and it wasn't their fault. Wes poked his head out from behind an overturned table and tagged a gunman in the knees. The trooper dropped and screamed in pain before Wes put him out of his misery with a headshot. The attackers were clad in the same military police gear as the men who had tried arresting them at the Alliance military archives. No unit insignia, as expected. A few minutes before the firefight, the false MPs had come in looking for him, Tycho, and Hobbie. Except this time, instead of attempting an arrest, the MPs apparently had orders to kill on sight.

'Wes, cover me!' Tycho yelled from across the room.

'On it!' Wes leaned out of cover again, putting down suppressing fire as Tycho flanked one of the other gunmen. Pinned and distracted, the MP didn't notice Tycho until it was too late. Hurrying out of the cafeteria, the two made their way to the east wing to pick up Hobbie. Along the way, they ducked and dove through firefights, passing battles between the unknown attackers and the hospital staff. These days, all Alliance military personnel had enough training to handle a rifle and blaster, including rear-echelon folks like clerks and doctors. Wes and Tycho were reasonably confident that the staff could hold the MPs at bay long enough for them to get the hell out of dodge. As they reached the door to Hobbie's ward, Wes and Tycho took cover on either side. On the count of three, Tycho pushed the door open.

'Friendlies coming in!' Wes called out.

'Prove it!' yelled one of the people inside.

Tycho shrugged. 'Hobbie, you in there?'

'O hai, Tycho,' Hobbie slurred, still under the effects of his painkillers. 'How's yer sex life?'

'Confidential,' Tycho deadpanned. He turned to one of the doctors. 'Doctor, we need to get our friend out of here. Are there any side entrances in this wing?'

'Down one level, green corridor.'

'Thanks,' Tycho said. He and Wes hauled Hobbie up by the shoulders. The going was tough. Wes and Tycho weren't exactly free of injury and Hobbie still wasn't capable of proper thought, which meant they had to lug him very carefully down the stairs. And to make matters worse, as they exited the stairwell, they heard something even more horrible amid the screams and gunfire: the hum of a lightsaber in motion. And it was getting closer.

'Oh, you have _got_ to be shitting me,' Wes muttered.

* * *

Opinions remain divided even today regarding flying starfighters at full throttle and low altitude in urban environments. Opponents argue that doing so is incredibly dangerous and stupid. Fatal crashes were far more likely when one maxed out the afterburners, sometimes mere meters from street level. Proponents of this technique argue that it's fucking _cool_. So far, Farlander and Horn were squarely in the latter camp. By the time they reached the Imperial palace, Moff Savik was fighting to hide his nausea underneath a veneer of calm and Farlander's wings were covered in splattered bits of several unlucky missile teams.

'Quite the entrance,' Danvik said as the Jedi and their prisoner disembarked.

'Alright, let's get this son of a bitch locked up,' Corran said, handing Savik off to a pair of stormtroopers.

'Just in time, too,' Danvik replied. 'We've almost got the city mopped up. Good work, you two. Get some rest while you can. This fight isn't over yet.'

Farlander and Horn watched the Imperial Knights and stormtroopers cart Savik off for interrogation.

'That was too easy,' Farlander muttered.

'Yep.'

'Think he's got a team in place to bail him out?'

'Yep.'

'And we're going to be camping his cell in case it does happen, right?'

'Yep.'

'Good to know. I'll go ready the tripmines.'


	11. Dr Feelgood

10

Dr. Feelgood

Normally, hospitals were meant to be places of healing and tranquility. When one thought of hospitals, those thoughts were of bacta, calming colors, and being surrounded by friendlies. Hobbie, in particular, was a hospital connoisseur and bacta snob by experience. He could list off the top of his head the places with the best food, best beds, and prettiest girls.

At that particular moment in time, though, Wes, Hobbie, and Tycho weren't exactly capable of equating the terms "hospital" and "safe haven." Crouching at the door that led to one of the ground floor corridors, the three listened to the sounds of the slaughter taking place. Underneath with the blaster fire and the terrifying buzz of the distant lightsaber, the three heard the screams of the dying and the baying of unseen beasts. And then there were the smells of cooking meat, ionized air, and the unpleasant substances stored in one's body spilled out by gut wounds. Gesturing for Wes to keep his and Hobbie's heads down, Tycho rose slowly and peeked through the vertical viewslit on the door. What he saw wasn't promising.

The hospital was ablaze. In the distance, the main lobby's plants were wreathed in flames. The floor was covered in the bodies of dead patients and hospital staff, their blood pooling and spreading. A pair of gas-masked soldiers slogged through the corpses, kicking bodies and shooting the ones that groaned or twitched. As they moved, the soles of their boots dripped. They weren't fully armored and as expected, no unit markings were visible on their fatigues. Their weaponry, their webbing, and the armor vests they wore looked milspec, but third-party rather than taken from any of the Alliance's or Empire's major contractors. One unfortunate patient tried to scramble for safety from one of the side doors, only to slip and be dragged back, screaming, by some unseen entity. Mercifully, one of the troopers put a blaster bolt through the man's head and cut his misery short. Wet squelching and the sound of cracking bone followed as the corpse disappeared into the room. Moments later, something indistinct darted out. The troopers threatened it with their blasters, advancing on it. After a few seconds, the creature stalked off towards the lobby to unoccupied feeding grounds. After a few minutes of butcher's work, the soldiers left, exiting the corridor and moving to some other objective. All the while, Tycho heard the sound of the lightsaber moving closer.

'Come on,' he whispered. They would be sitting ducks here in the stairwell. They'd have better chances finding a window to break. Slowly, he pushed the door open, nudging the head of a dead orderly aside. The poor duros had taken shots in the left eye, chest, and gut. Curiously, the lightsaber had fallen silent. Had he run out of things to kill?

Tycho led the way into a room on the left. Patients too injured to move had simply been killed in their beds, double-tapped in the head or stabbed in various vulnerable points. There were windows but they were locked and welded shut from the outside. There was no way in hell to open those things silently from inside. Blaster fire would open them back up but going loud would be suicide. Cursing under his breath, Tycho picked up a bottle of antiseptic cleaning fluid left on a trolley, dumping the liquid on himself.

'The hell are you doing?' Wes mouthed.

'Something out there,' Tycho replied. 'Don't know if it tracks by scent.'

Wes held up an empty hand. Tycho passed him another bottle, which Wes dumped on himself and Hobbie. Tycho searched the trolley and found pocketed a few bacta syringes and bottles of potentially useful chemicals. He jabbed a stim needle into Hobbie's neck, too. Just before they could leave, however, Wes spotted a shadow outside the door. Tycho caught the look in his eyes and they darted for cover. While Wes and Hobbie got under one of the hospital beds, Tycho dropped and lay amid the bodies, blaster readied and concealed under a nearby corpse.

The creature that stepped in was like nothing they'd ever seen. Tall, lanky, and vaguely humanoid, it stepped slowly over the bodies. Its face, and thus its species, was concealed beneath a wide-beaked mask and opaque lenses. A pale, three-fingered hand holstered a lightsaber as the Dark Jedi stepped into the room. The skin on its hands was dry and cracked, skin flakes crumbling as its fingers flexed and relaxed. A ragged, filthy, black robe covered up the rest of the Dark Jedi's body, the cloth flowing and rippling as if underwater. Its stolen, dirty military webbing was loaded down with old, primitive surgical equipment rusted from poor maintenance, while bottles and pouches of unidentified substances lined its belt. At its side stalked a simian beast, hairless and pink-skinned with a yawning jaw and more teeth than a rancor. It lumbered forward, supporting itself on heavily muscled arms, sniffling and snorting like a sick Gamorrean, poking at the dead bodies.

Advancing, the Dark Jedi hummed a tune, pausing to draw blood samples from the corpses. Wes and Hobbie, the latter finally giving into the stims, watched with horror and confusion as the Dark Jedi went about his work. Tycho, meanwhile, did his best to look dead.

'The children here are sick,' the Dark Jedi whispered, his voice raspy and and full of phlegm. 'So very sick. They must be given Father Dragon's mercy.'

As he moved, it seemed as if the Dark Jedi corrupted the space around him. There appeared to be a haze in the air around him, blurring that which lay behind him. Every breath was an effort and every movement felt leaden in the plague doctor's presence. As he neared, Tycho felt a buzzing and scratching in his mind. He was reminded of the carrion vermin infestations that followed in the wake of the Empire's more grisly actions-virus bombings, mass executions, starvation blockades. This Dark Jedi was like a walking manifestation of those affronts to life. Simply being near the bastard made one's skin itch.

Tycho fought to keep still as the Dark Jedi stalked past him. After seeing people like Luke Skywalker, Kyle Katarn, and Jaden Korr in action, he knew that the safest way to deal with an enemy Force user on the ground was to keep quiet and stay the fuck down until he moved on. As the Dark Jedi nudged aside the corpse next to Tycho, the latter tensed involuntarily. The doctor paused.

Before the Dark Jedi could act, Wes threw an emptied power cell out into the hallway. As the Dark Jedi left to investigate, all three pilots came to the same conclusion: the bastard didn't have the finely tuned Force senses that the Jedi Order's Knights possessed. Problem was, this guy was standing between them and any exits the building had. Stealth was not an option and they wouldn't get another chance. Tycho hurled one of his pilfered chemical bottles at the doorway and fired at the spot where it shattered, setting the flammable liquid ablaze. It went up beautifully, giving the three a very small and brief barrier between them and the bad guys. Wes and Hobbie got out from under cover and shot up the window. Wes shoulder barged the window frame's chewed up remains, knocking them out and falling into the bushes below. Hobbie and Tycho followed soon after as the Dark Jedi dispersed the flames with the Force. The three ran and kept on running as the baying of unseen hunting beasts echoed long into the night.

* * *

A few days later, Luke and Wedge talked to their three spies via the _Claw_'s holocomm chamber.

'Dark Jedi on Coruscant,' Luke said grimly.

'Sure as sure,' Wes replied. 'Don't know how powerful he is, but I know the first thing to do in case of future sightings is to run the hell away. And don't ask us to bring back a live specimen of those weird creatures, either.'

'Nothing that insane,' Wedge said. 'For now, focus on laying low. We'll send you some backup for your investigation.'

'Roger that,' Tycho said. 'You get our data transfer?'

Wedge nodded, holding up a data drive containing the footage taken from the miniature holocam Tycho kept on his gear. 'Went through it right before you called. Reinforcements should be arriving soon. Get rested up and stay mobile.'

'Yub yub,' Wes said. 'Wes Janson, Interstellar Man of Mystery signing off.'

And with that, the holocomm shut off, leaving the room shrouded in darkness. Luke and Wedge stepped back out into the ship's brightly lit main corridor, heading for the briefing rooms with the new data in tow. Combined with the files taken from the Wraiths' mission, they painted a rather worrying picture.

Wedge thumbed his commlink. 'Captain, how's our hyperdrive?'

With the comm signal's quality, Tomar's voice was even more gravelly than usual. 'Fully charged, General.'

'Acknowledged, Captain. Commence jump to hyperspace.'

'Roger that. Bridge out.'

Shutting off his commlink, Wedge turned to Luke. 'How's the Bastion team? Any word from them?'

Frowning, Luke replied, 'No. Not since they captured that rogue Moff. And that worries me.'

* * *

Since the Moff's capture, Farlander and Horn had done nothing but keep watch over Savik's cell. While there were Imperial troops on station to patrol the prison levels of the Imperial palace, the whole issue with sleeper agents had kept the two Jedi paranoid. Farlander in particular had been adamant about fortifying their position. It was nearly impossible to dissuade him from filling the place with antipersonnel mines, grenade bouquets, tripwires, and other assorted surprises. Farlander had almost turned the place into a miniature copy of the trap-laden necropoleis of the planet Koganusan.

The Imperial Knights had spent the past few days probing his mind and ripping out what secrets they could. Psychic interrogations weren't pretty, especially when the people in charge of them weren't concerned with things like ethics. Corran hadn't been happy with their methods. Danvik had once been a member of the Jedi Order and Horn knew for a fact that Luke and the other Masters wouldn't have taught him the Imperial style of things. Still, he couldn't deny that they achieved results. The Knights now knew the locations and commanders of every insurgent cell on Bastion, the Moff's resources, and the nature of the insurrection's command structure. Savik's little power grab was effectively over. Now all the Knights needed to do was secure tangible, physical evidence that the attacks attributed to the Alliance were false-flagged.

So there they were, sitting in an Imperial prison watching the Moff's cell. The Moff looked like hammered shit now, no doubt due to the brutality of the Knights' methods. He looked haggard and sleep-deprived, his normally impeccable composure marred by what appeared to be perpetual nausea.

'You seem awfully calm about this,' Farlander remarked at last.

Savik said nothing, maintaining his expression of haughty contempt.

'So riddle me this, Savik,' Corran said, 'why'd you do it? Even for a Moff, this is monumentally stupid. False uniforms? Sleeper agents? Assassination attempts? What do you get out of this? Pushing the Empire into a war with the Alliance doesn't strike me as the most productive or _sane_ way to seize power for yourself.'

'Do you honestly think I would lay out my motivations for you, Jedi?' Savik replied. 'Like some holovid villain?'

Shrugging, Corran inspected the gas cartridge port on his blaster pistol. 'You're due for execution soon, Savik. We all know standard Imp procedure for prisoners like you. You'll be hauled off to an Imp black site, shot in the head, dismembered, and cremated with no documentation of your fate. Figured you'd want to get it off your chest.'

Savik sighed. He sat in silence for a few minutes while the Jedi and guards watched. 'Duty.'

'Come again?' Horn asked.

'Duty,' Savik replied.

'I am calm because I know I have done my duty,' Savik said. 'And duty is nothing without sacrifice. Isn't that right, soldier?'

Farlander and Horn traded a look of confusion before realizing that Savik's last remark wasn't addressed to them. One of the stormtroopers on duty had a signal beacon in his left hand. Judging by the blinking red light on the side, it was already active. Farlander drew his lightsaber.

'No, don't!' Corran yelled.

As the trooper went for his blaster, Farlander stepped forward and relieved him of his shooting hand. Unfazed by the Skywalker handshake, the stormtrooper dropped the beacon and tried to arm a grenade, only for the Jedi Knight to bisect him on the backswing. As Farlander stabbed the signal beacon, he activated his comm.

'Bishop, problem. Prison security may be compromised. I say again, prison security may be-'

Then the prison floor shook and exploded as something burst out from underground, smashing the rear wall of Savik's cell. It was massive, boxy, and bulky, fitted with what appeared to be mining equipment on the front plus a pair of side weapon mounts. Its entrance must have also destroyed the electrical wiring around the cell, since the ray shield keeping Savik inside collapsed, leaving only the secondary layer of durasteel bars between the Jedi and the intruder vehicle.

'Scratch that,' Farlander said. 'Security is _definitely_ compromised. Dammit!'

The Moff dropped to the floor as two streams of burning fuel erupted from the side sponsons, turning the cramped prison block into an inferno. Farlander put up a sphere of force, turning the flames aside. Even though neither Jedi was hit, the smoke and flames obscured their vision long enough for the vehicle's passengers to haul Savik inside. With his free hand, Farlander tried throwing his lightsaber, only for the blade to miss and graze the flame APC's heavily armored front instead. The second the entry hatch closed, the APC reversed, spitting more flames to cover its retreat.

'Son of a bitch,' Corran muttered. 'All units, be advised that enemy units have recaptured Savik. Some sort of burrowing vehicle.'

Danvik cursed on the comm. 'That explains the tectonic activity. Where are you now?'

'Prison level, in pursuit,' Farlander said, pushing aside the burning fuel with a telekinetic blast and retrieving his lightsaber. This whole investigation and counter-insurgency had turned into a complete clusterfuck. Imperial forces, even at the Palace level, were compromised, and with Savik gone, said clusterfuck had put them and the Empire a step back. And then there were all the questions this whole business raised. What was a prison guard doing with an orbital-grade signal beacon? Where the hell had the flamethrower mining rig come from? And just how deep did Savik's pockets run to fund all this bullshit?

Questions for later. 'Come on. Trail's going cold.'

* * *

As the _Claw_ traveled through hyperspace, Luke briefed the Wraiths on their next mission. 'Good news and bad news, ladies and gentlemen,' he said. 'Good news first. Once we arrive at our next port stop, Rona IV, you're all being temporarily relocated to Coruscant for the next stage of your investigation. You'll be in friendly territory with all of the Alliance Intelligence support General Loran can muster. And that means better refreshers, beds, and food for all of you.'

'What's the catch, sir?' Trey asked.

'The catch is this,' Luke said, inserting a data drive into the briefing room's hololith. A still image taken from Tycho's recording of the hospital attack appeared. 'Bad news is, there's a Dark Jedi on Coruscant. The sighting was confirmed by three other assets on site at the time. And he brought friends.'

Tapping a few keys, Luke enlarged the beast that accompanied the Dark Jedi.

'That _thing_ appears to be connected to the data you all collected from that Alliance research base.'

'Yuuzhan Vong fleshcrafting,' Scut ventured.

Luke nodded, closing the holo image and switching to the translated copies of the Wraiths' stolen files. 'Looks like it. A study of its features indicates a mixture of Gamorrean, rancor, and gundark physical traits. It appears to be some sort of hybrid.'

Discreetly, Jesmin handed Scut five credits. He'd won the bet on the files' contents. 'What was the Alliance doing with Yuuzhan Vong biotech?' Scut pressed. 'I thought the Alliance abhorred such things.'

'According to the data logs, it looked like the Alliance were trying to study and reverse the effects of Vong parasitic infestation on planetary ecosystems and local wildlife. In addition to the obvious medical applications, the Alliance scientists were also hoping to figure out a way to counteract Vongforming. The test subjects included rancors, gundarks, and at least one terminally ill Gamorrean, all suffering from the same affliction. I'll upload the details to your datapads after the briefing.'

Ben frowned. 'Something doesn't add up, though. Why is a Yuuzhan Vong attack animal hanging around a Dark Jedi? I thought the Vong built those things to hunt and kill Force-sensitives.'

'You're right,' Luke said. 'We don't have the full picture yet. Hopefully, if you can bag the creature or its master, we can start getting some answers. You ready to bust some Dark Jedi?'

Ben grinned. 'You kidding? I was born to do this.'

'Good,' Luke said. 'Any other questions? No? Good. Get some rest, Wraiths. It's going to be a long ride back to the Core.'


	12. In Deep

11

In Deep

Farlander and Horn clawed their way out of the tunnel dug beneath the Imperial palace, covered in dirt and barely alive after dodging countless sinkholes and cave-ins. They found themselves outside the walls of the Imperial Capital in the shadow of the great mountain on which the palace was built. The two Jedi followed the mole APC's trail as the sun set, their commlinks deadened and jammed.

'Can't establish a line to the Imperial Knights,' Corran said, muttering profanity as he fiddled with his ear bead.

Farlander shrugged. 'Well, guess it's good to know we're on the right trail. Come on. We have a perp to explode.'

Heavily developed after the Bastion Accords, the planet had lost much of its natural, virgin countryside. No matter where one turned, the horizon remained filled with great starscrapers and space elevators. Pristine grasslands turned into arcologies and multi-storey agri-complexes. Hive cities expanded upwards while the urban and suburban sprawl moved outwards to house the people needed to sustain Bastion's burgeoning industry. The mountain range that covered one of the capital city's flanks was among the last few undeveloped stretches of land left on the planet, its natural beauty preserved at the last minute by a decree from the Empress herself. It was in this mountain range that the two Jedi emerged, the Palace Mount dwarfing the rest of the range.

Suddenly, the two Jedi wished that they had brought winter gear. Shit be cold, yo.

'My nipples could cut through glass,' Horn muttered as he trudged up the mole transport's trail.

The trek was slow, tortuous, and tedious, with the two Jedi reaching deep into their mental reserves to fight off the cold and fatigue. Neither of them had gotten much sleep in the past few days due to the need to watch Savik.

'Man, what I would give for some air support right now,' Farlander said. 'And a jacket.'

Corran stuffed his hands into his armpits in the futile hopes that his body heat would bring some feeling back into his fingers. With comms jammed, calling Whistler up to bring his X-wing over was out of the picture. 'You and me both.'

* * *

The insurgents' base camp was a ramshackle affair, hastily prepped for the sole purpose of the prisoner's retrieval and extraction. The last of their Bastion forces were mere light infantry, ragged and beaten after being run out of the capital by Imperial Knights and the Bastion Planetary Guard. Acceptable losses. The action on this world was never meant to be more than a distraction while the rest of the Master's forces laid the groundwork for His rise.

As the prisoner approached his personal transport, the guards saluted. Still clad in their stolen Imperial Knight armor, the Captain and his men cut a far more impressive figure than the rabble protecting the rapidly shrinking camp.

'Sir!' The Captain, proper as ever, clicked his heels together and stood ramrod straight. 'By my estimates, your craft will be ready for departure in five min-'

'Something wrong?'

'Something, sir. A momentary blip in the Force. I'll send someone to investigate now.'

* * *

Farlander stifled a curse as he fumbled with the knot on a string of det-cord, his fingers numb from the biting cold. He had crawled under a number of hauler vehicles, wiring their fuel tanks with explosives, and concentration was becoming increasingly difficult with the wind chill and the need to suppress their own presences in the Force. Horn, meanwhile, had split off to find and disable the base's comm jammer.

As he finished up his final set of demo charges, Farlander froze. Footsteps. Slowly, his hand moved to his blaster as the footsteps neared his position. After a few seconds, a pair of boots stopped in front of the truck, facing away from him.

'Echo Nine here,' said the guard, 'I'm seeing nothing. We've done so many foot patrols around this place that it's going to be impossible to track any intruders by footprint.' A pause. 'You too, huh? Yeah, call it in. No way in hell am I staying in the cold this long.'

Eventually, the guard walked on, oblivious to Farlander's presence. Slowly, he crawled out, checking his surroundings. All clear. As he got clear of the motor pool, however, he heard the whine of engines. Shit. They were out of time. He couldn't afford to wait for his partner. He blew the charges, taking advantage of the ensuing confusion to make a run for the landing pad.

* * *

Corran cursed as he heard the detonation. Either the op had gone tits-up or Farlander had gone cowboy cop. Either way, their plan was fucked. He abandoned his attempt to quietly slice into the enemy's comms, drawing his blaster and pumping a few shots into the console instead before making a run for the landing pad.

Activating his commlink, Corran sent Whistler a quick series of comm-blips to signal an emergency, then switched to the encrypted Imperial Knight band. 'Bishop, Bishop, it's Horn. Target located and about to go mobile. Grab whatever you can and trace my signal _now!'_

Moving towards his partner's approximate location, Corran drew his blaster, planting two shots in the chest of an insurgent stepping out of a nearby portable refresher. Another cultist charged him, chanting hymns as he leveled a rifle at Corran, a bayonet fixed under the barrel. As the insurgent fired, Corran dropped his pistol, igniting his lightsaber and bringing the incandescent blade to bear. The first two shots he deflected harmlessly into the snow, with the third going wide. Corran stepped forward, slicing through the blaster rifle's hand guard and ramming a shoulder into the cultist's chest. Horn finished his opponent off a moment later with a quick coup de grace and moved on toward the sounds of gunfire.

Horn dropped into cover behind a fallen hololith table a couple of meters away from his partner, gunfire chewing into the table's sides and the ground nearby. Snow melted and sublimated as bolts of plasma impacted the ground near him.

'The hell took you so long?' Farlander yelled above the din.

'Probably all the fighting,' Corran said flippantly.

With a flick of the wrist, Farlander ejected a spent energy cell from his blaster, slotting a new one in with practiced ease. 'Still got any explosives on you?' he asked.

'Two tube charges, one stun grenade,' Corran replied.

'Stun 'em.'

Corran did so, plucking the pin from his last grenade and chucking it over his cover. With a loud crack, the stun bomb detonated, leaving the gunmen suppressing their position stunned. Leaning out from behind a blaster-charred hauler sled, Farlander poured fire into a storage shed and the side of a canvas tent. Corran heard two bodies drop a split second later.

'Come on,' Farlander said. 'Time's a-wasting.'

* * *

'Uh, Captain, aren't we supposed to-'

'Quiet, Two. I'm working on that.'

Savik's guards, the False Knights, remained stationary on the landing pad as the Moff's shuttle finished its pre-flight routines. Their leader sat, cross-legged, on the cold durasteel of the platform, seemingly oblivious to the incoming hostiles. After a few moments, the Captain let out a long, slow breath, a small cloud escaping the breather grille in his helmet.

'_Now_ I'm ready,' the Captain declared. 'Alright, men, let's make this quick. I'm going to need your help for this one, so prepare to channel your energies into me.'

With a collective shrug, the others did as they were told. 'Um, aye-aye, sir,' said Number Two skeptically.

Finding his center, the Captain raised a hand toward the mountain's summit. 'Lord Savik, we're ready to act on your mark.'

* * *

Corran stopped in his tracks as he and Farlander reached the stairs that led up to the shuttle platform.

'What are you waiting for?' his partner asked impatiently. 'We don't have all day, princess.'

'Shut up for a second,' Horn said. 'Do you hear that?'

Confused, Farlander stopped talking and listened, using the Force to give a little boost to his senses. Oh. Oh shit. There was a fan and shit-hitting was involved. Excrement was currently in the process of impacting said fan. Still, both of them knew that there was only one way to go: forward.

Undeterred, the two Jedi charged up to the landing platform, weapons drawn. Savik's transport lifted off, passengers still boarding and settling in as it ascended. A man in full Imperial Knight armor took control of one of the shuttle's side guns, waving goodbye to the two Jedi.

'I'm afraid you're too late, gentlemen!' the False Knight called out. 'I'd love to break the ice with you some time but I'm afraid our master has other plans!'

In response, Corran let fly with his last two tube charges, with Farlander giving them a further boost through the Force. The False Knight swiftly traversed the shuttle's autoblaster mount, blowing both charges out of the sky with a quick burst of fire as Savik's shuttle pulled away. And as the avalanche neared the abandoned base camp, neither Whistler nor the Imperial Knights were anywhere to be seen.

* * *

'Ben. Oi, Ben.'

Myri snapped her fingers a few centimeters from Ben's face. Nothing. Sighing, she pinched his nose shut. That woke him up.

'I'm awake,' Ben slurred, slapping her hand out of the way. 'What's up?'

'Rise and shine, sleepyhead. Departure's in twenty.'

And with that, he was on his feet and hefting his kit bag. After spending so much time with the Wraiths, Ben had gotten better at quickly shaking off post-sleep grogginess. The months between the Maw campaign and this new crisis had been full of inconsistent scheduling, emergency deployments, red-eye flights, and late-night sentry duty. He stepped into the waiting transport ship and strapped his gear into one of the overhead compartments.

'So what's your take on this whole Coruscant business?' Myri asked.

Ben shrugged. 'From the intel Uncle Wes sent us, I'd say we're dealing with more than just run-of-the-mill Dark Jedi.'

'How so?'

'This isn't the Imperial Civil War anymore,' Ben said as he got out of the transport. 'Inquisitors aren't exactly running around the galaxy these days, so how exactly did this Dark Jedi get his hands on all that Alliance milspec gear? Where did his boys get the MP uniforms? How did he manage to get in bed with a "nonexistent" Alliance starfighter unit?'

'Maybe we missed a few Inquisitors.'

Shaking his head, Ben took a seat on a nearby crate. 'Not possible. NJO wetworks teams don't leave a job unfinished. Master Katarn made sure of that. And they were damn thorough. They scrubbed Imp records-complete and authentic, mind you, and I don't know _how_ Master Katarn got his hands on them-and hunted down every last one of those guys down. So it's not an Inquisitor and the mental effects described in the report indicate power a step above the average black-pajama douchebag.'

Myri already knew what he was going to say next. 'It's Sith.'

'It's Sith,' Ben confirmed. 'Or at least something on par with historical descriptions of Sith goons.'

'But not an Inquisitor.'

'Right.'

'Uh-huh,' Myri said skeptically. 'Right. But the Sith were wiped out. Palpatine and Vader were the last _real_ Sith, remember? Everyone afterward has only been a pale imitation of that old religion. Even Jacen.'

Ben shrugged and let that last bit slide. The less said about Jacen, the better. 'I don't know for sure,' he admitted. 'I hope I'm wrong but my gut tells me that there's more to all this.'

Snorting, Myri replied, 'Think you packed your tinfoil hat, Mister Conspiracy Theorist? You're probably just overthinking this.'

'Do I look like the kind of guy who overthinks things?'

* * *

A long time ago on a planet far, far away, Ben and his fellow rookies encountered an obstruction on one of their daily PT runs-a rather large boulder had fallen on their usual path, leaving them stuck.

Rubbing his chin in thought, a younger Ben suggested, 'Maybe we could lift it with the Force?'

'Go around!' yelled Master Katarn from afar.

'Out of our league,' said a nearby Talz student. 'Even if we combine our efforts.'

'Hack it apart?' Ben offered.

Master Katarn was a bit louder this time. 'GO AROUND!'

'Training sabers won't do jack,' said another student.

'Maybe if we used a lever?'

'AAAAAAAAAARGH.'

* * *

'Okay, that was _one_ time,' Ben protested. 'And that isn't how things played out.'

His squadmate rolled her eyes. 'Sure, Benny, whatever you say. Come on, let's get the rest of this gear loaded.'

She stooped to pick up a crate of computer equipment, struggling to lift it until Ben pulled the whole thing up with the Force, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

'Come on, brah. Do you even lift?'

Trey raised an eyebrow as he carried an armful of electronics into the transport the plebeian way. 'Look at this motherfucker. The Boy Wonder thinks he's a goddamn superhero.'

'Dude, I _am_ a superhero,' Ben remarked in jest. 'I put on my super-suit every day I'm in the Order. Come on, sidekick. We have work to do.'

'Sidekick?A-bu-wha? _Sidekick_?' Myri said incredulously, outrage causing a little bit of her dad's accent to bleed into her speech. 'Now see here, you little fu-'

* * *

'And after that,' Syal said, 'assuming our patrol runs smoothly, we return to the ship and prep for another hyperspace jump. Any questions?'

The _Claw_'s fighter wing were gathered in one of the ship's briefing rooms, sitting in front of a holographic facsimile of the Orsini System. Officially, it was still in neutral space, but with skirmishes erupting across the Alliance's borders with the Empire, neutrality was no longer a certain thing. Around the small five-planet star system, Syal had displayed a series of waypoints marking the rough route this fighter patrol would take. It was a simple enough pattern-stop by the local space colonies, hail them, record any news they bring up, then fly back home.

From the back of the briefing room, Luke raised his hand.

Syal pointed at him. 'Yes, Master Jedi?'

'Commander,' Luke said, 'if you don't mind, I'd like to be your wingman on this sortie.'

An unusual request to be sure-Uncle Luke normally flew by himself or alongside her dad. Still, he looked worried. And saying 'no' to a worried Jedi was about as dumb as leaving Lando Calrissian alone in a room with one's girlfriend.

Syal shrugged. 'Sure. We'll be dropping into Orsini in an hour, sir. I'll meet you at Hangar 1 in a few. Everyone else, I want you combat-ready. Force willing, you won't have to launch, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the whole neutrality thing. Any other questions? Nothing? Dismissed.'

* * *

Deep within the Imperial palace, Jagged Fel dropped out of his bacta tank, gasping for air and shivering as medical droids rushed to towel him dry. He was intact, barring a couple of new scars. There was nothing else in the palace's medbay save for an Imperial Knight, faceless in his full combat armor. Jaina and the others must be at a meeting somewhere, he thought.

'Sir!' the Knight said, saluting smartly. 'It's good to have y-'

Jag raised a hand, gesturing for silence as he got his senses back in order. Everything seemed too bright, too loud-probably a side effect from spending so much time immersed. Still coughing up bacta, Jag made do with sign language, asking for a commlink. The Knight obliged, passing his Emperor his own throat mic. Jag cleared his throat one last time, activated the commlink, and took a page straight out of his dad's book.

'FFFFFFINALLY, THE EMPEROR HAS COME BACK TO BASTION!'

Took him long enough.


	13. Run Through The Jungle

12

Run Through The Jungle

'Incapacitated?'

'Incapacitated. Avalanche.'

Master Katarn's facsimile flickered as Jag adjusted the gain on the holocomm console. Jaina stood behind him, disheveled and haggard. She hadn't gotten a minute of sleep since he had been hospitalized. In the darkness of the conference chamber, the old Jedi Master's image tinged everything with a soft electric blue glow. With a sigh, he asked, 'How bad?'

Jag grimaced, wishing that he hadn't been cooped up in that damned bacta tank while Farlander and Horn were busy tracking down the rogue Moff. 'Broken bones, hypothermia, tissue damage from frostbite. They'll be in sickbay for a while.'

Kyle muttered a string of curses in Huttese. 'What about the target? Has the trail gone dark?'

'And that's where the good news comes in,' Jag said, a flicker of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'We snagged a number of datapads and datadrives from the camp site, salvaged what we could. Seems your guys smoked the men who were responsible for slagging their files before they could wipe everything. It's not much, but we have star charts and a few scattered geographical names. We've got commando teams en route to those locations as we speak.'

'Huh,' Kyle grunted, eyebrows raised in surprise. 'Wasn't aware you had many mission-capable clones left.'

'Not clones,' Jaina clarified, brushing an errant lock of hair behind her ear. 'Graduates of the ICOM 2 project, recruited from the rank and file. They're trained by the big Boss-man himself.'

'As good as their predecessors?'

Despite the stress of the situation, Jaina couldn't help but grin. 'Let's just say the Imperial special forces community has learned a few things since the Clone Wars.'

* * *

'Drop pods away, Colonel.'

IC-1138 nodded, watching the data feed from the CIC hololith as eight dots materialized on the display. Eight of his students, en route to their first combat mission. Eight bullets aimed at the heart of a world. One by one, the pods' signatures lit up with status readouts and callsigns. Aimed at the northern insertion point: Apex, Ripper, Brick, Hoojib. The men of Vampire Team. To the south were Sokol, Oryol, Berkut, and Strelok of Stalker Team. This was a day of many firsts. New gear, new tech, new doctrine, even a brand-new starship with a freshly graduated crew. Emperor Fel had given them the works. Their chariot, the stealth frigate _Shadow of a Doubt, _still looked and smelled factory-new. The only old things here were him and his commandos, each one a veteran of years of campaigning.

Boss allowed himself a smile as he watched the armorcam feeds, each one a view out of an armored drop pod's T-shaped viewport. The poor sons of bitches on the ground didn't stand a chance.

* * *

Apex watched the clouds rush past as his pod plummeted, maneuvering thrusters coughing and hissing as they fought maintain a correct course in the face of Hanh Tinh's tumultuous, roaring winds. Sheets of rain poured down, pattering against his drop pod's viewport like bullets. The planet's monsoon season was at its peak, the night sky darkened by storm clouds and torrential rain, illuminated for the most fleeting of moments by the occasional bolt of lightning. With his night vision enabled, Apex saw the world through a green filter, the planet's equatorial jungles stretching out across the horizon.

As his pod broke the jungle's canopy layer, Apex braced himself for landing. Even in this day and age, inertial compensators couldn't completely nullify the shock of a combat drop, the commando's head snapping forward as his pod made impact. A quick glance at his sensor feed showed nothing but his team's friendly signatures. He popped his harness, reached up, and yanked the release lever, explosive bolts blasting the front panel free.

'Status?' he said, pulling his weapon free from its compartment. He flicked off the safety and chambered a kinetic round.

Vampire Team gathered around him, taking a knee as he ran through post-landing diagnostics. All were clad in the dryly-named Advanced Modular Combat Suit, painted in woodland splinter camouflage and outfitted with bulbous, triocular multisight goggles. Due to the difficulties of cheaply and reliably modding blasters for stealth, they'd opted to use slugthrowers for this op instead. Hoojib, the team marksman, carried a sniper rifle with an integrated suppressor, chambered for subsonic armor-piercing rounds and fitted with a night vision scope. Apex, Ripper, and Brick had assault rifle variants of the same weapon, equipped with simple iron sights instead.

'Clean landing,' said Ripper, immediately recognizable by his hard-bitten North Dorin accent. 'Ready on your go, Apex.'

Nodding, Apex opened a long-range link on the general Imperial band. 'Vampire to _Shadow_, boots on the ground and ready to rock.'

'Stalker here,' said Sokol a moment later, 'good landing. Already moving to secure exfil.'

'Solid copy on all,' 1138 replied. 'Green light, gentlemen. Let's make some money.'

* * *

'Say again, Confessor, say again. Atmospheric interference is-oh, fuck it.'

Varco hammered his fist the comm tower's control console, muttering curses as he attempted to reestablish contact with the base camp. Hanh Tinh was a forsaken, worthless, and inhospitable rock, far removed from the masses Father Dragon sought to enlighten. While Varco often asked himself why he had been assigned to this world, and why Father Dragon even desired a foothold here, he was one of the faithful-he was sure greater powers than him had a plan, and that this duty, no matter how odious, had a place in it. He would serve loyally, and when the time came, Confessor would reward him for it. The faithful would be rewarded on this great journey, they'd told him. The faithful would be rewarded.

And sometimes, even the faithful needed to get down and dirty. He popped open the console's access panel, shining a battered flashlight into a tangle of wires every bit as thick and knotted as the vines around him. As he inched closer, the light flickered and died. With a sigh, he shook the flashlight and banged it against the console, flicking the switch on and off. Nothing. The batteries were dead.

'Rellen,' he said, calling out to his patrol partner. 'Rellen, do you have a flashlight?'

No response. He was probably off huffing death sticks. 'Rellen,' he repeated, louder this time.

'Son of a bitch,' he muttered, getting up to search for his missing partner. Shouldering his blaster, he made his way deeper into the jungle, shining the underslung flashlight into the trees as he went. Bloody hell, it was hard to see in this rain. Surely nobody would chastise him for switching patrol schedules with someone once he got back t-

His foot caught on something, something that felt nothing like a root or rock or dirt. Aiming his rifle down, he saw a human body, clothed in the same raincoat and webbing as him, face down in the mud, a pack of smokes in one hand. There was a hole in the back of Rellen's raincoat, right in the middle of his neck.

Varco turned but it was already too late. The last things he saw, illuminated by a flash of lightning, were the flash of steel and a humanoid figure, a mountain of a man clad in armor, barely visible as he melted out of the forest.

* * *

'Good kill,' Hoojib said, watching Brick withdraw his vamblade from the militant's throat.

'Cut the chatter,' Apex growled. 'Move, bearing three-three-five. Sooner or later, they'll wonder what happened to these guys.'

* * *

The target facility was a hastily erected camp situated in the equatorial rainforests of the planet's eastern continent. Where a standard Imperial firebase would have been an orderly network of reinforced earthworks and gun nests atop a cleared out hill, the Dragon Cult, as ImpInt had dubbed them, had erected a crude, ramshackle system of dugouts and shallow, muddy trenches enclosed by a rectangle of cheap chain-link and razor wire, and dotted with the occasional milsurp prefab shelter. Spears of light stabbed and swept into the darkness from massive, swivel-mounted floodlights atop the guard towers at each corner of the perimeter.

At first, the going was slow. Vampire Team crawled forward as they broke the tree line, inching their way towards the camp through the muck in between spotlight sweeps. After fifteen minutes, they passed the outer layer of barbed wire, cutting through with their vamblades and hastily rearranging the wire once the whole team was through. After ten more minutes, they reached the outer trenches, which lay beneath the gaze of the spotlight towers. Illuminated only by crude liquid fuel lamps and chemlights, the trenches made for much quicker movement. The guards on duty, senses dulled by rain and fatigue, went down easily and quietly to the commandos' blades. It wasn't long before they reached the chainlink fence that enclosed the base proper. Hoojib unclipped a fusion torch from his webbing and cut a man-sized hole in the fence behind a prefab. They were in.

Amid the prefabs and dugouts, there sat a single bunker, properly constructed to Imperial standard. As the team stacked up on the door, Brick cracked open the main door control panel and hooked it up to a code cylinder. After a few seconds, the door lights switched from red to green, and the locks deactivated with a hiss of hydraulics. Slicing made easy-why bother manually messing with things on-site when you could pack a data unit with pre-made Imperial skeleton key protocols?

Apex took point, shouldering the door open and shooting a pair of guards before they could rise from their card game.

'First room clear,' he said. 'Move.'

It took Vampire team five minutes to clear the top level. Not a single round was wasted, not a single alarm was raised. Quick, clean, and efficient, exactly as they'd been taught. They descended a staircase and came upon a fire door.

'Locked,' Brick said, testing the handle. 'No control panel, either.'

'Keyhole?' Apex asked.

'Negative. We'll have to blow it.'

'It was only a matter of time before we had to go loud anyway. Rip, set charges.'

'On it,' the commando said, slapping an adhesive shaped charge on the door, as well as a thermite charge on each hinge. He raised three fingers, counted down, and hit the detonator.

Armor auto-senses kicked in, muffling the sound as the explosives detonated. Ripper was first in, ramming his vamblade into a cultist and using him as a shield as he fired his rifle one-handed, ventilating two more as he advanced. The others advanced past him, each one killing another gunman. An officer, clad in black robes, tried to draw a pistol, only for Apex to grapple, subdue, and gag him.

As Apex searched the officer, Brick got to work on the computer terminal embedded in the man's desk, scrubbing it clean of files. For a base in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, it had a disturbing amount of sensitive information.

'Shit,' he muttered. 'You guys are not going to like this.'

Hoojib peered over his shoulder. 'What am I looking at?'

'Right now? Contacts list.' Brick flipped through apps, text files, and folders as he transferred the computer's data into a portable hard drive. 'A whole lot of comm frequencies. I'm seeing extension codes for Coruscant, Bastion, a whole lot of other planets. I've also got shipping manifests, mentions of holovid networks, water filtration centers, Vong biotech, and, uh, fucking hell, I can't understand this.'

The last file he'd opened wasn't in Basic. In fact, it wasn't even in a tongue that any linguist today would consider to be 'alive.' It was a dead language. As he read through it, he envisioned ruin and death, hideous strength and unlimited power. A black city on a yellow lake under a yellow sky and a dead sun. Stagnant air and hanged stars, the court of a dragon. He began to whisper the words he read, each syllable a harsh serpentine hiss. He would have kept going had Apex not shaken him awake. He hastily shut the file, slapping the side of his helmet to shake off the haze.

'The fuck were you saying there?' Apex said. 'What the hell was that?'

'No clue,' Brick replied groggily. 'Memetic hazard. Definitely a memetic agent. Strong one, too. Shit, how deep was I?'

'Speaking in tongues, my dude,' Hoojib replied. 'Come on, let's go. The whole damn base has probably figured out we're here. You got all the files?'

Brick took one last reluctant glance at the computer screen. 'Yeah, we've got everything.'

'Then let's torch this place and get the fuck out of here.'

* * *

As Vampire Team exited the bunker with their prisoner in tow, the building went up in flames, incendiary charges detonating. The first few guards who had approached the bunker to investigate its comm silence were taken by surprise and cut down with ease. Other, more distant guards saw their comrades cut down and returned fire, scrambling for cover as they sent undisciplined, inaccurate fire downrange.

'Stalker, Vampire, signal is green.'

'Roger that.'

A few seconds later, remote explosives detonated the guard towers, a prefab barracks, a transport shuttle, and a fuel tank by one of the camp's landing pads. Stalker Team descended in front of Vampire, having commandeered a beaten milsurp LAAT/i from the camp's vehicle pool. Blaster fire impacted harmlessly off its portside flank as the transport shielded the commando team, the port ball turret blazing away at a pair of cultists. One of its side hatches slid open, allowing Vampire to board with their prisoner.

'Is this thing spaceworthy?' Apex asked as he strapped the prisoner into a bucket seat.

'Yes,' Sokol replied, 'but I'd slap a rebreather on your cargo just to be safe. Strap in. Afterburners in ten.'

* * *

Thirty minutes later, _Shadow of a Doubt_ was Bastion-bound and the cult base site was a smoking crater, courtesy of a single Trident anti-ship torpedo. 1138 and his two commando teams stood at attention before the bridge holocomm as Jagged Fel took in their reports and data transfer.

'He talked?' Jag asked, reading through the contact lists.

1138 nodded. 'They _always_ talk. There's another uprising planned, sir. Another false flag attempt, but this time with Imperial hardware. Bigger than the one on Bastion.'

'Did he say where?'

'Coruscant, sir.'


End file.
